2023-10-29 15:00:17
The inventors of the biomechanical dog from left to right are: Sonia Orozco, Lynda Tamayo, Diana Orrego and Juan Pablo Murillo.
Photo: Charle Zapata
Leonardo Da Vinci – renowned painter, sculptor and anatomist of the 15th century – to portray human anatomy and understand the functioning of organs, “he observed corpses in detail while performing dissections to draw parts of the human body accurately,” as he explains. Juan Camilo Suárez, Professor of Medicine and Psychology at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana.
Now, 3D instruments are used in medical schools that allow human anatomy to be visualized, studied and dissected with a high degree of precision. Such is the case of the Anatomage Table, a device that allows drawing plans and enlarging sections of the organism, which made it unnecessary to have a body available to a classroom.
However, in veterinary medicine, techniques are used to analyze animal organisms that seem more contemporary to Da Vinci than to modern times, since until now there had been no progress in the creation and implementation of appropriate instruments to delve into the anatomy of dogs, cats. or other species.
For this reason, ten years ago, Lynda Tamayo, Sonia Orozco and Jorge Gallego (from the Faculty of Agrarian Sciences of the University of Antioquia), together with Juan Pablo Murillo and Diana Orrego (Biomedical engineers and teachers at the Metropolitan Technological Institute of Medellín), They undertook a long journey to create a canine model – as realistic as possible – with which veterinary students can interact, since it simulates the conditions that a future patient could have.
Follow El Espectador on WhatsApp
“The idea came from Professor Gallego, who worked in the emergency area. A decade ago, he wondered why models of human medicine were so advanced and why something similar didn’t exist for veterinarians. When we investigated, we found a lot of cool stuff in medical undergraduates, while we had stuffed animals and rigid plastic dolls with electronic devices inside,” explained Orozco.
Thus, what the teachers of both educational entities propose is that the instruments that are currently used – to perform RCCP, simulate heart rate, blood pressure, arrhythmias, changes in the color of the mucous membranes, among others – be replaced by biomechatronic elements, such as the dog they invented, so that education in this field evolves.
“Our dream is to contribute to education, to train better veterinarians to benefit pets. We are not motivated by the possibility of becoming rich, we are professors and the ownership of the device belongs to the two universities, not to the people who participated in its structuring. It is thinking about how this is going to help form better clinical skills, so that the animals have quality of life and better timely medical care,” the three researchers who still make up this project said in conversation with La Red Zoocial.
This new technology, which was patented before the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce on September 28, will be integrated into the UdeA professorship from the beginning of 2024 and students are already asking their teachers and are motivated by this new instrument that will allow them to take on realistic medical cases without endangering a patient’s life.
Initially, the body was taken from a pug breed canine and donated to science. Her tutor, instead of complying with the protocols traditionally practiced after the loss of a loved one, chose to contribute to the development of science. “As people bury or cremate their pet, there are those who will say: ‘I want my pet to be used for the training of future veterinary doctors,’” Orrego explained.
Then, the organs that were in the animal’s abdomen were removed, to place the cables there, along with the technology that transmits the symptoms that a sick canine would present. Later, they moved on to plastination, which “is the process in which we remove water from the body and replace it with a silicone. The real body remains, but it is practically as if it were a plastic doll,” Tamayo commented.
And a curing process continued, in which the model was bathed in a type of substance, the fur was cleaned so that it retained a soft texture, and the spaces in the canine’s belly were adapted for the installation of all the devices. electronic and mechatronic.
This way the pulsations of the mechanical canine can be measured.
Photo: Charle Zapata
The technology that the stuffed animal has inside is imported from the United States or Germany and is available from authorized distributors in the country. “We buy electronic devices, resistor microcontrollers, capacitors and build modules for the visualization and detection of electrocardiography, for the detection of capillary filling, blood pressure in animals,” explained Orrego, a biomedical engineer at the Metropolitan Technological Institute of Medellín (ITM). .
In addition, high-level code was developed using Python, with the aim of programming clinical alterations that the animal may have and for the animal to express them physically, so that students can analyze the alternative solutions.
With this, the teacher would program a type of disease to the canine through any mobile device with Bluetooth or cable transmission. Thus, the students would face a very real case, in which they must present the patient, and they begin to examine him, as they would do with any other dog.
“An electrocardiogram can be simulated and students can detect an arrhythmia. Tell them what medication should be given, if chest compressions are necessary, among other dynamics that lead them to action,” Orozco shared.
The result was a model of a dog, with its real skin and appearance, with which cardiac, cerebral and pulmonary resuscitation can be practiced; the pupillary reflex, to evaluate the neurological status; taking blood and femoral pressure samples and conditioning catheters, with the possibility of expanding the simulated functions in the future.
After the idea began to be structured by university professors, the request reached the intellectual property area of each entity, to protect the project from plagiarism and certify that, indeed, it was an innovative idea in the veterinary industry. .
“We detected that the biomechanical dog fits into the category of patent protection, so we started with the Observatory, in which we verified if in the world there exists something identical to what the researchers wanted to ensure,” said Mónica Zuluaga, intellectual property lawyer. of the ITM.
Consequently, the person who has advised the project through legal means confirmed that there is nothing similar or the same in the world, which is why this dog – which has not yet received a name – has a high level of inventiveness.
Which means that it meets one of the three requirements to be protected with a patent. “First of all, there are not two of these products in the world, it is not an obvious thing for experts in the field and it has industrial application,” said Zuluaga.
The person seen in the photo is one of the researchers. Lynda Tamayo is a veterinarian and belongs to the Faculty of Agrarian Sciences of the UdeA.
Photo: Alejandra Uribe
After having all the legal documentation and the wording of the patent ready, the application was filed with the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce in Colombia. When continuing with the process and checking that everything was in order, the institution requested a substantive requirement, to more precisely justify the relevance of the idea in the market.
This process took about two years. Period in which researchers, students, and the legal team were involved in writing information, testing different electronic devices, observing the anatomy of animals, looking for parallels from biomedical medicine, and making them a reality in a prototype that is the one on display today.
“The patent is nothing more than a recognition of investigative work and is a way to protect creations. They can sell that, license it, receive royalties, but in a project of this type the main thing is to appreciate the inventors who have generated such an innovative product with a high inventive level,” added the lawyer.
The dream of those who started this project is to expand the model so that animal education is more realistic and raises its quality standards. For this reason, they are interested in continuing to study ways to integrate biomedicine and animal anatomy, since they see it possible that in the future there will be a feline, bovine and more species with the same characteristics of the specimen that they show to the world at this moment. “Currently, we have advanced work on two simulators, one for artificial insemination for cattle and another for tracheal intubation for dogs,” said Tamayo.
They also do not rule out perfecting the dog they already have. For example, making it more flexible, making its joints mobile, among other functions that they plan to implement, so that the veterinary community can give all possible uses to their invention.
From left to right are: Sonia Orozco, LyndaTamayo, Diana Orrego and Juan Pablo Murillo.
Photo: Charle Zapata
On the other hand, the step they hope to take now is to industrialize the biomechanical canine, so they are looking for investors who can contribute to the project to make production faster, have more reach and have more hands to help them. to replicate dozens of copies that reach the greatest number of veterinary chairs.
“The good news is that, a few days after obtaining the patent, we are already beginning to receive proposals for the reproduction of the model, so that it reaches different training spaces,” Orozco reported.
The UdeA and the ITM, owners of the patent in equal parts, will be able to obtain royalties from the sale of their invention, which will be reflected in extra income for the researchers and for the two educational institutions. The creation and obtaining of the patent opens the doors for researchers to continue looking for alternatives in this sense, since they recognize the importance of better training professionals, to also impact the health of pets (in this case dogs) Positive way.
???? Do you want to stay up to date and know the latest news about the animal world? We invite you to see them on La Red Zoocial. ???????? Also, if you have a story or are interested in telling yours with your pet, you can write to us at [email protected]
1698598243
#Colombians #create #biomechanical #dog #hope #change #veterinary #medicine