Designing an Affordable Distal Radius Fracture Reduction Simulator for Medical Training; Pharmaceutical Pricing: Side Effects of a Broken System

Medicines, pharmaceuticals, and biomedical technology have improved exponentially over time, saving countless lives and improving many more. However, the current state of the medical industry in the United States has caused the prices of these advanced medical technologies to be excessive, creating stress and hardship for the people meant to benefit from them. Both components of my research addressed these extreme medical prices, with my technical project creating an affordable, alternative biomedical technology while my STS research examined why these prices are so severe.

My technical project focused on creating an affordable and easily replicable Distal Radius Fracture (DRF) training device. DRFs are fractures of the radius bone close to the wrist and are one of the most common fracture types. DRFs must be set back to their original position, a process called reduction, before they are cast to ensure that the bone grows back properly. The current practice for learning how to reduce a DRF is to practice on live patients under the close supervision of a professional. This is troubling given that studies show practicing reduction using training devices leads to significantly better results when operating on patients. However, the variety of existing training devices is limited and these models are expensive, with some costing nearly $3000. Additionally, improvised devices on the internet are often hard to replicate and are not very accurate to the true reduction process. Along with my seven group members, we developed a training device that met our goal of developing a cheap, replicable training device. Our device costs roughly $50 to replicate and only requires materials that are easily attainable on the internet. Ultimately, our training device was approved by an orthopedic surgeon who said it accurately modeled the reduction process.

My STS research paper focused on the high prices of pharmaceuticals in the United States. I was led to this topic from the excessive prices of existing DRF training devices. The reasons behind the pricing of pharmaceuticals can provide insight into the high prices in the rest of the medical industry, including the available DRF training devices. Within my STS research paper, I analyzed insulin prices given that many of the factors affecting them also affect other pharmaceuticals in the United States. I used Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to guide my analysis of insulin prices. ANT is a type of systems analysis that considers all the human and nonhuman actors in a system and maps their relationships to understand the system as a whole. ANT is appropriate for insulin prices because it values the effect that insulin, a nonhuman actor, has on human actors and their relationships. My research and analysis offered several notable insights: the complicated nature of the pharmaceutical system prevents easy change, the U.S. Congress has failed to make a significant change despite having the most power to do so, and the high prices of pharmaceuticals are ultimately propelled by the greed and self-interest of multiple actors.

Together, my technical project and STS research function to improve the landscape of the current medical industry. My technical project provides a useful biomedical device for a fraction of the cost of similar products while my STS research provides insight into the excessive prices in the medical industry. I hope that these works will educate people about the pricing issues in the medical industry and encourage them to help change this broken system.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering

Technical Advisor: Jason Forman

STS Advisor: Sean Murray

Technical Team Members: Natalie Bretton, Ryan DeLoach, Lauren Elliff, Brian Garmer, Greer Matthias, Katya Napolitano, & Ethan Norris