 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Good afternoon on Thursday, folks. Ted Ralston down here in the Honolulu Studios of Think Tech Hawaii, overlooking downtown. And on our show, Where the Drone Leads, where we have typically brought you updates that apply to Hawaii and the world of drones, the emerging technology, the regulations and all that heavy stuff. Today, we have the great pleasure of an incredible team on our show that's dealing with the end-user aspects of drones and more than drones, but a really interesting bunch of people. Three guys here who are operating under the various hats. One hat is Mind Hawaii, and we'll hear more about that. But we have Dr. Russell Wu. Russ, thanks for coming on board. Chris Wong. Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming on board. You are at Kapiolani Medical Center and at UH and many other things. You are up and coming at UH Medical School. Freddie Wheeler, who is a grad student at UH and an entrepreneur and great connector of people and ideas. He put together engineering solutions to medical problems, which is what you're thinking about right now, Freddie. Yes, yes. That's a fantastic way to think about how engineering has that higher level of value. Not just doing things for engineering's sake, but for medical. That's pretty credible. And drones fit in that picture somewhere. We have to mention drones on this show because it's about drones. We've done that. Now we can talk about whatever we want. Thanks for Freddie. Talk to us about Mind Hawaii and how that's all coming together. So Mind Hawaii is a biomedical innovation competition that we're trying to start at UH Manawa. A biomedical competition. Yes. Annual basis, something like that. Yeah. This is going to be our first year. We're just starting it now. It's going to start sometime in September. Actually, our first kickoff will be tomorrow. It will be the first official event. Tomorrow? Yeah. Tomorrow will be the first kind of big official info session event that we're going to have out here. Can the public come to that? Are people who want to be involved in that show up? Yeah. We encourage people to come in. We ask that the competitors have at least one member from the University of Hawaii, either a med student or a student at UH Manawa be part of the team. But if other people from outside the community want to help out in any way, shape or form, we're more than happy to accept this. What websites should people turn to and where should people show up and what time to be part of this tomorrow? Our first event will be at UH Manawa tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the iLab. It's building 37. It's right by the Student Center. And for more information, they can go to www.mindhawaii.com. And we're going to see them on screen here after a bit, I believe, www.mindhawaii.com. Yes. Fantastic. I interrupted your flow. I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, this kind of was a birth from a course that's offered at UH Manawa, which was a biomedical design class, and it was run through Dr. Wu and also through a professor of mechanical engineering at UH Manawa, Dr. Miller. And it was just a semester course on how to take medical need from an idea to something that the doctors and patients can use right away. In this case, implicitly, the doctors and the people involved aren't able to fix the problem themselves. They're going to turn to you and other people who might apply different materials, different approaches, different software and such, and come up with maybe a different way to look at the problem. Yeah. The doctors have these pain points, right? They deal with the patients and medical procedures every day, so they understand the things that plague them. But they don't necessarily have the technical knowledge to engineer a solution. So Mind Hawaii is trying to bring these two groups that don't normally interact together and then hopefully have some really wonderful products that come out of it. And that's the key point. Many people who don't normally interact together into a common arena where the problem and the solution approach can be blended and maybe a better idea shows up. Yes. Exactly. That's like cutting across all disciplinary boundaries, too. There's no place you could have that at a conventional university. You've got departments that have Nobel Prizes awarded in English and in math and science, but no place for the award prizes in the problem-solving domain. You're going to create that. Yeah. We are going to create that. Okay. The three of you guys, okay. I think Chris has an interesting perspective being from the medical side as well. Yeah. So from the medical side, you know, we typically, you know, as medical students as physicians, you're always in the hospital. You're always hands-on with the patients, but, and so you always come across these various problems day to day. I wish that labric scope didn't fog up all the time, or if you want to look at more global problems, specifically, now that you mentioned drones on the show. Twice now. Twice? Okay. Well, there's a company actually that's using drones to deliver vaccinations to very rural third-world countries. So they're using, I think, both prop and also the planes. They load up the vaccinations, they fly them out to these very, very remote villages. It's combining that knowledge of the problem, the problem that vaccinations don't last very long. They've got to be chilled. They need to be under these certain climates. It's very hard to get them there by car. And so it's understanding that problem, but also from, like, Freddie's point, where on the engineering side, they have the technical skills. They actually know how to use CAD machines. They also know how to use CNC machines and things like that. And that's interesting. They're looking up so fast and so capable that it might escape the attention of folks working as detailed as they are every day in the medical profession. They might not see these capabilities emerging on that side of the equation. And they spend years training with these machines and really understanding how they work and what their capabilities are. And that's not something we really see at all when you're in the medical field. And then you're seeing this from a senior position in the medical field. What do you think? Well, I think this is very exciting. I've been, as mentioned by Freddie and Chris, I've been co-teaching with Dr. Miller at the university a course on design aimed at solving problems that the physicians bring me, bring our team. And one of the things we realize, and I feel it myself as a practicing doctor, is that when I have a problem, you tend to think of things, if I just change it a little, maybe it'll be better. But when you bring it to the students, they open their minds. And they're not just making a small iteration on the current solution. They're thinking of all different, sometimes seemingly wild and crazy ways to solve the problem. But that really thinking out of the box and bringing different perspectives, I think, lead to very innovative and potentially groundbreaking solutions. And what you're providing is a framework for how that might happen. That's what we're trying to do. Which doesn't really exist in most of our operational domains. They just think of the power company, think of the insurance companies, think of medical profession. There's just no way that problems can be articulated and brought forward to some aggressive and interested bunch that wants to go study them. So once again, you're creating that. This is our... I will say that on the engineering side, there has been some teams at UH using drones and search and rescue and similar applications. But I don't think we've seen it extend all the way to the medical domain, as you're suggesting here, with prescription delivery. But we had some discussions at the legislature with the aerospace caucus last session. And there was discussion about the remote hospitals like Lanai, on Lanai, taking medical samples and have to get those to some lab that can evaluate them before they expire. And there's like only four airplanes a day to Lanai. So even in Hawaii, we have that need to get rapid service of lightweight, but frangible and fragile substances. So again, drones play in that game as well. So right here in Hawaii, we have that. Not just third-world countries, but here in Hawaii. So people, if they want to join this competition, they need to form a team. Do they have to come with a problem already in mind, or is the purpose of the interaction to put the problem owners together with the solution generators? It both. If someone has an idea that they really feel passionate about and they want to get a team together, and all they're missing are the people, they can come and try to form a team. That's what the first couple of weeks are going to be. These next couple of weeks, we'll have events for the participants to network together to see who has similar interests and different skill sets most importantly. Well, we're trying to build our multidisciplinary teams. So an ideal team, a team that we think would have the highest level of success and put out a good product for Hawaii's medical needs is a team that has a doctor or a med student, a team that has an engineer, a team who has a business major or even a law school student. They all come together, they understand, they each have their own wheelhouse, the doctor understands the medical side, the engineer understands the technology the most, the business student knows how to market and knows how the finances work and the law student would understand regular regulations and things like that, patent law. So ideally, they all come together and they have a very robust product that's commercial wool that has impact in our community right away. This is so important to the kids coming out of school because at least when I came from an engineering school in the traditional discipline of 50 years ago, the earth had just crusted over when I was in school before you guys. And we were so channeled in math and certain engineering disciplines and such and when you came out of school, you really didn't know what handle to grab to go solve a problem. And I think the world needs problem solvers these days. I know that the company I came from, my last aerospace job, the company now has a large facility in St. Louis where it takes graduates and runs them through six months of how to solve a problem. Even though they're graduate engineers, they still need to be taught how to solve a problem. And you guys are providing that at what level now? What level can participate? Undergraduates? We're opening it up, I think, to everybody at the University of Hawaii, looking for people. As far as medical school goes, for everyone who's a resident can also participate, I think we're opening it up to PhD candidates as well. At our last meeting, our little information session, a few PhD researchers were pitching their ideas and how their research could be transitioned away from using them in bull-buying models to transitioning that into a useful human product. So it's really open. And I think that's the beauty of it. Anyone who has got an idea at the University of Hawaii, this is the place to come. It's the place to grow that idea, meet people that you'll never probably meet outside of this program, unless you're walking into the different departments. But also, I think it's a good learning skill. So we're opening it up to undergraduates, freshman all the way up to, like we were saying, PhD level students. And if you are an undergrad or we don't want to turn them away, I think it's a good way for them to get a taste of what real engineering, real problem solving is like once you graduate, you learn a valuable skill set that you can keep using throughout your collegiate career. And I think that's a benefit of this. And to add to that, one of the benefits that we see of this program is not only is it teaching them all these skills, it's also giving them the opportunity to network with individuals from the community. So we're having mentors and things like that from various disciplines. Whether they be engineering mentors, whether they're medical mentors, basically giving these participants the opportunity to meet these people, to work with them, to talk with them. And then maybe even down the line, once I graduate, you can work with them in the community. So our job is, you know, elder statement in this domain is just to get out of their way, right? Exactly. Help us, help us. That's right. That is so interesting. So once again, I mean, I repeat it a lot because it's such a novel idea. And I'm sure that people watching the tubes that go beyond this will be struggling also to understand how to get involved, because it's such a novel idea. It's such a broad idea. It has so many flexibilities in it. There's many entry points and many outcomes. It's not an easily definable function you've created here. But once again, you're generating the ability in the medical world for problems to become known and not hidden and brought forth. And folks who can perhaps deal with those problems in whatever domain that may be, materials, software, big data, whatever it might be, seeing how they might apply something against that problem in a competitive environment with an annual cycle. Is it going to be an annual, repeated competition? Yeah, we're having our start date in September. And then we're shooting for a mid-April competition, kind of big event at the end, where the teams can. It's almost a school year, isn't it? Right, right, yeah, it's pretty much tied to the school calendar. We're giving students time for finals and things for each semester, so they don't have to worry about it impacting their schoolwork. But really, we're trying to shoot for a mid-April event where the teams can then present their products to the public. It's open to the public. We're hoping to get a big enough space for that. And they can pitch. And the judges will be members of the medical community, the investment community. And then hopefully, that generates some ideas and furthers those projects along. Let's take our first break here. And then when we come back, let's talk about how somebody, say me, would come up with an idea and enter this competition. What do I need to think about? What kind of a team I need? And how I also do my day job of paying attention to this much more exciting thing to do after our break. For the day of the big game, watching at home just doesn't feel the same. But on the list is who's going to drive. It's nice to know you're going to get home alive. Plan for fun and responsibility to the GT. Captain of our team, it's the GT. For every game day, assign a designated driver. I'm Tim Apochella, host for Moving Hawaii Forward, a show dedicated to transportation issues and traffic. We identify those areas where we do have problems in the state, but also the show is dedicated to trying to find solutions, not just detail our problems. So join me every other Tuesday on Moving Hawaii Forward. I'm Tim Apochella. Thank you. Aloha, I'm Richard Concepcion, the host of Hispanic Hawaii. You can watch my show every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. We will bring you entertainment, educational, and also we'll tell you what is happening right here within our community. Think Tech Hawaii, Aloha. We are back, folks, second half of our show, where the drone leads. Think Tech Hawaii downtown Honolulu with a fantastic bunch of guests from the Mind Hawaii Competition Organization, leading off a whole new concept of competition for the benefit of society to put it in a big way. These three guys here, Dr. Russell Wu, Chris Wong, and Freddie Wheeler, UH, UH, and UH, how about that? And not only the UH leadership function, right? Right on. So here we go. So we were talking before the break about this novel idea, which is so big it's hard to even wrap your arms around. And you got some slides that I think the guys have that can talk a little bit about this. We have a couple of previous projects. So that's our nice logo. And I mean, even the logo itself is kind of trying, we're trying to showcase what we're trying to do right. Left brain, right brain, the kind of more organic medical side versus the technology side. And we're trying to bring them together into the competition. Okay, so I guess we wanted to talk about this. This is kind of examples of what Mind is trying to foster, some kind of ideas, very similar. So this is a hospital, it's Mulaga Hospital, Uganda. If you look very closely, this is actually their neonatal unit. And if you look very closely, there's two incubators sitting in the back. But there's no babies in them. They're actually being used as storage. So one of the big problems with kind of donating these high tech pieces of equipment to third world countries is they don't have the infrastructure to both repair or they don't have the infrastructure repaired, they don't have the funding to repair it. So they're actually being used as I guess storage. So a company called Neo-Nurture kind of came up with a really interesting solution for this. We can get to that, yeah. So this is a company called Neo-Nurture. They made a baby incubator out of car parts. So the warmth is provided by the headlights, it's powered by the car's battery, and there's a whole host of other functions. But the key part of this is that third world countries like Uganda have the infrastructure and parts on hand to repair these when they break down. So these very expensive technologically advanced units when they get sent there, the moment they break down they immediately become useless. So from an engineering perspective, the reliability and the supply chain that allows the thing to keep in service would be a factor that would be recognized. In fact, that almost implies in the competition you're gonna run, that sort of thing, sustainability, reliability would have to be a voted factor in achieving success. Definitely, I think when we thought of the competition, we all met as a group and we have three areas right now that the prizes are gonna be focused on. One is high impact and that is your broad what's the large market, what's gonna hit the most patients, but also special needs children and elder care in Hawaii. So we're gonna be looking, we're gonna encourage the students to be looking at problems that are specific to Hawaii and a special focus on cost-effective and sustainable solutions for these problems. In our environment. In our environment. Which means a salt air rich environment where electronics don't survive all that long and even some metallics have a tough time. So that's a very interesting way to get the students to realize it's not just the duct tape version that is gonna be successful. It's gonna be that to start with perhaps but it's gonna be sustainable and durable and tolerate the environment with a broad plateau solution as opposed to a peak solution. Engineering talk. Yeah, but there's a, I mean there's a wide range of like complexity, right? So the baby incubator while the solution seems very ingenious why don't I just use car parts to solve this problem. For certain students, right? Especially for undergrads that might seem very ambitious for them, right? So I think we have another project, couple of slides. Another slide. It's like syringes. Right. And we'd like Chris to talk about the. Yeah, so this is kind of another problem that's out there. So again, it's a third world country kind of issue. In areas that are highly where HIV and AIDS is very prevalent. You also notice that I guess literacy rates are also very low. So for example, in these countries, I can tell you draw five milliliters of the medication, give it to your child every day. Problem is one, they probably don't know what a milliliter is and probably they may not even know what five is. So the big problem is if you overdose or underdose you can start to create HIV resistant or I guess medication resistant HIV which down the road is not very good for these patients. So another company that came out of a program very similar to ours out of Rice University created a very simple and ingenious solution to this problem. So if we can. Are we gonna see that on the next slide? Yeah, next slide please. Yeah, so this came out of a similar competition from Rice University and they're called dose rice syringe clips and these are color coded plastic clips that you put onto your syringe and then it stops you past a certain part, right? The little black stopper gets stopped by the clip and then all you have to do is put the right color into your syringe. The colors, you got it. Right, if you have all the colors or even just give them the correct color, the doctor or whoever is giving out these clips just gives them the one that they need. Clips it on and then that's it. You get a perfect dose every time. So this is a rather, the problem itself seemed daunting, right? How do we ensure that we get the right dosage out in these rural countries that require medication but the solution itself is really ingenious. It's plastic in a mold. And the solutions don't have to be something out of Merck Incorporator or something like that that's a pretty complex system of the computer and some software and a download. It could be very simple. Yeah, that program run out of rice is very similar to ours. There's a bunch of universities across the country that have similar things and that was a student team that came up with that idea, ran with it and now has a company out of it. So. You know, just seeing that, just you mentioned local. Something that I just came to mind as I was seeing that picture. Years ago, some elementary school student around here won a contest for clips like that you put on your slipper when you go to somebody's house because all the slippers are outside and they're all the same, right? All came from longs. And your own clip, though, is customized to you. So there's a, there are some. The slippers last weekend. There are some correlations here locally that would be, I think, intriguing. So, once again, let's say I had an idea. I had either a problem or I had an idea of a technology or a capability or something to do with this, like this. How would you suggest to me, in order tomorrow, to come down and interact with this bunch? Oh, well, we have. I don't mean this bunch in an uncontrolled sense with the Mind Hawaii competition. Well, if you're a student of UH Medical School or you're an employee of the Applied Research Lab would that be helpful? Then, okay, so we actually have a slide. I think it's like the last slide up. It's like how you can help. Okay. Yeah, so Mind Hawaii is looking for support from the local community. We really want to make this products for Hawaii, for Hawaii's needs, because so many times, especially in academia, research gets done and it's purely for the benefit of research, which has its own benefits to it. I've never heard that before. I can't believe that. All right, and that has its own benefits, but what we are trying to do is get real impact for real people here in Hawaii. So we want real, clearly identified problems that have a Hawaii association. Yes, that would be the idea. Although if you have problems that apply everywhere, not just, it doesn't have to be Hawaii specific. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But don't feel like your problem is too small, like it only affects Hawaii that I shouldn't come out. So please, if you have an idea, please come out. If you are a student of UH Medical School or UH Manoa, please show up to our event tomorrow. It's, again, it's from six to eight at the iLab, building 37, if you're looking at the map. And just network with the rest of the participants if you are an adult with a full-time job. What we really like is if you have a problem or an idea that you want to see, be a mentor, be a sponsor. So basically just give us some background information, some brief kind of abstract type of deal about your problem. And then just be available, just promise to be available to mentor these students along in your problem. Because they'll come to you asking, hey, what do you want out of this? What is your problem that you're facing? So we really want to bring that connection together. Okay, so we're talking about mentors and we're talking with who are knowledgeable people. We're talking about a rich problem set. As far as the technology set or the solution elements, how was that being harvested and brought into the picture? In the last two minutes here by the way. Well, so MindHoy is not only just the competition. We kind of think of it as a, I guess, like a mentorship program where we're not only taking people from idea, we're not just matching people. We're also teaching them the skills that they need. So we're holding workshops about two to three times a week that teach you how to not only think about a problem, how to come up with a solution, how to kind of research what's already out there, but we're also teaching them how to actually work in the workshops, how to kind of use the tools, how to... This is a maker space on steroids with structure. Yes, it's actually being run out of... All right, I got the picture now. This is mentored and that's some key part mentored and with some controls so that it's not going to go out of control. And this is great. So again, it took half an hour and we finally got to that point. I mean, this is a hard thing to understand. I really applaud you guys for taking this on and having the courage to push it forward. And I hope it's being advertised broadly. I hope this will help get more folks involved in what we're having on and on the technology side and on the problem side. The problem side is the hardest thing to write down. How do you define a problem? Generally problems, we live in them all day long. We don't bother writing them down. Anyway, Dr. Richard Wu, Chris Wong and Freddie Wheeler from all from UH and all with a brilliant idea here. Mind Hawaii, tomorrow at six o'clock at building 37 at UH. Come on down and everybody start contributing to the problem space and contributing to the solution space. Medical orientation, right? Got it, thanks so much for coming on. We'll keep tabs on this thing from time to time as the year goes by here, okay? Thanks guys very much for coming on now. Thanks for having us. Okay.