A teen scientist's invention to help wounds heal | Anushka Naiknaware

251,252 views ・ 2018-06-19

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:12
Ever since I was a young girl, I was always fascinated --
0
12841
3468
00:16
(Laughter)
1
16333
1157
00:17
Oh!
2
17514
1151
00:18
(Laughter)
3
18689
2100
00:21
OK, I meant younger and more short.
4
21149
2334
00:23
(Laughter)
5
23507
1173
00:24
If that's possible to imagine.
6
24704
2000
00:27
But ever since I was a young girl,
7
27101
2071
00:29
I was always fascinated with how the world worked exactly how it did.
8
29196
4540
00:34
So this, very early on,
9
34403
2468
00:36
led me to the fields of mathematics and chemistry.
10
36895
3400
00:41
I would keep going further and further, and as I kept going,
11
41481
3747
00:45
I realized that all the fields of science are interconnected.
12
45252
3375
00:48
And without one, the others have little or no value.
13
48950
3992
00:54
So, inspired by Marie Curie and my local science museum,
14
54188
4142
00:58
I decided to start asking these questions myself
15
58354
3295
01:01
and engage in my own independent research,
16
61673
2825
01:04
whether it be out of my garage or my bedroom.
17
64522
2703
01:08
I started reading journal papers,
18
68367
2040
01:10
started doing science competitions,
19
70431
2277
01:12
started participating in science fairs,
20
72732
2857
01:15
doing anything I could
21
75613
1876
01:17
to get the knowledge that I so desperately wanted.
22
77513
2889
01:21
So while I was studying anatomy for a competition,
23
81712
4159
01:25
I came across the topic of something called chronic wounds.
24
85895
4000
01:30
And one thing that stood out to me was a statistic
25
90371
4298
01:34
that said that the number of people in the United States with chronic wounds
26
94693
5090
01:39
exceeds the number of people with breast cancer,
27
99807
3580
01:43
colon cancer, lung cancer and leukemia, combined.
28
103411
5310
01:49
Hold up.
29
109966
1151
01:51
So what is a chronic wound?
30
111141
1531
01:52
(Laughter)
31
112696
1151
01:53
And why haven't I heard about a 5K walk for chronic wounds,
32
113871
3405
01:57
why haven't I even heard about a chronic wound in general?
33
117300
2951
02:00
(Laughter)
34
120275
2048
02:04
So after I got past those preliminary questions,
35
124387
2968
02:07
and one that I will clarify for you,
36
127379
2293
02:09
a chronic wound is essentially when someone gets a normal wound,
37
129696
3810
02:13
except it fails to heal normally
38
133530
2658
02:16
because the patient has some kind of preexisting condition,
39
136212
3738
02:19
which in most cases is diabetes.
40
139974
2133
02:25
So more staggering statistics were to be found
41
145613
3024
02:28
as I kept going on in this research.
42
148661
2424
02:31
In the year 2010 alone,
43
151109
1804
02:32
50 billion dollars were spent worldwide to treat chronic wounds.
44
152937
6439
02:39
In addition, it's estimated that about two percent of the population
45
159950
3468
02:43
will get a chronic wound at some point in their lifetime.
46
163442
2952
02:46
This was absurd.
47
166800
1332
02:49
So as I started doing more research,
48
169244
1747
02:51
I found that there was a correlation
49
171015
1721
02:52
between the moisture level inside a wound dressing
50
172760
2619
02:55
and the stage of healing that the chronic wound would be at.
51
175403
3880
03:00
So I decided, why don't I design something
52
180069
2588
03:02
to measure the moisture level within the wound
53
182681
2229
03:04
so this can help doctors and patients treat their wounds better.
54
184934
4308
03:09
And essentially, expedite the healing process.
55
189696
3365
03:13
So that's exactly what I set out to do.
56
193085
2600
03:16
Being a 14-year-old working out of her garage-turned-lab,
57
196157
4174
03:20
I had a lot of constraints.
58
200355
2040
03:22
Most being that I wasn't given a grant, I wasn't given a lot of money,
59
202419
3785
03:26
and I wasn't given a lot of resources.
60
206228
2538
03:28
In addition, I had a lot of criteria, as well.
61
208790
3515
03:32
Since this product would be readily interacting with the body,
62
212329
3691
03:36
it had to be biocompatible,
63
216044
2176
03:38
it also had to be low-cost,
64
218244
1937
03:40
as I was designing it and paying for it myself.
65
220205
2911
03:44
It also had to be mass-manufacturable,
66
224157
2222
03:46
because I wanted it to be made anywhere, for anyone.
67
226403
3035
03:51
Thus, I drafted up a schematic.
68
231442
2016
03:53
What you see on the left hand-side is the early schematics in my design,
69
233482
4492
03:57
showing both a bird's-eye view and also one stacking variant.
70
237998
5344
04:03
A stacking variant means
71
243366
1175
04:04
that the entire product is consisted of different individual parts
72
244565
5190
04:09
that have to work in unison.
73
249779
1790
04:11
And what's shown there is one possible arrangement.
74
251593
3982
04:18
So what exactly is this?
75
258479
1568
04:20
So I had gone on to testing my sensors
76
260665
1999
04:22
and as all scientists have stumbles along their work,
77
262688
3516
04:26
I also had a couple of problems in my first generation of sensors.
78
266228
3548
04:29
First of all, I couldn't figure out
79
269800
1705
04:31
how to get a nanoparticle ink into a printcheck cartridge
80
271529
2969
04:34
without spilling it all over my carpet.
81
274522
1928
04:36
That was problem number one.
82
276799
1452
04:38
Problem number two was,
83
278792
1262
04:40
I couldn't exactly control the sensitivity of my sensors.
84
280078
3444
04:43
I couldn't scale them up or down,
85
283546
2507
04:46
I couldn't really do anything of that sort.
86
286077
2080
04:48
So I wanted something to solve it.
87
288181
1638
04:49
Problem one was easily solved by some scouting on eBay and Amazon
88
289843
3091
04:52
for syringes that I could use.
89
292958
1745
04:54
Problem two, however, required a lot more thought.
90
294727
3112
04:57
So this is where this factors in.
91
297863
2190
05:00
So what a space-filling curve does
92
300077
1640
05:01
is it aims to take up all the area it can within one unit square.
93
301741
4415
05:06
And by writing a computer program, you can have different iterations
94
306641
4273
05:10
of the different curve,
95
310938
1520
05:12
which increasingly get close to one unit square,
96
312482
2262
05:14
but never quite reaches there.
97
314768
2000
05:18
So now I could control the thickness, the size,
98
318212
2441
05:20
I could do whatever I want with it, and I could predict my results.
99
320677
3361
05:25
So I started constructing my sensors
100
325800
2143
05:27
and testing them more rigorously,
101
327967
2127
05:30
using money that I had gotten from previous science fair awards.
102
330118
3563
05:34
Lastly, I had to connect this data in order to be read.
103
334177
3888
05:38
So I interfaced it with a Bluetooth chip,
104
338089
2469
05:40
which you can see here by the app screenshots on the right.
105
340582
3253
05:44
And what this does is that anyone can monitor the progress of their wound,
106
344346
3795
05:48
and it can be transmitted over a wireless connection
107
348165
4414
05:52
to the doctor, the patient or whoever needs it.
108
352603
3200
05:57
[Continued Testing and Refinement]
109
357079
2002
05:59
So in conclusion, my design was successful --
110
359105
3754
06:02
however, science never ends.
111
362883
2769
06:06
There's always something to be done, something to be refined.
112
366097
3059
06:09
So that's what I'm currently in the process of doing.
113
369180
2833
06:12
However, what I learned was
114
372776
2053
06:14
what's more important than the actual thing I designed
115
374853
3296
06:18
is an attitude that I had taken on while doing this.
116
378173
3533
06:22
And that attitude was,
117
382180
2135
06:24
even though I'm a 14-year-old working in her garage
118
384339
3334
06:27
on something that she doesn't completely understand,
119
387697
3697
06:31
I could still make a difference and contribute to the field.
120
391418
3489
06:35
And that's what inspired me to keep going,
121
395792
2420
06:38
and I hope it inspires many others to also do work like this
122
398236
3857
06:42
even though they're not very sure about it.
123
402117
2603
06:45
So I hope that's a message that you all take on today.
124
405768
2564
06:48
Thank you.
125
408356
1183
06:49
(Applause)
126
409563
6729
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7