NPC News

National Park College (NPC) Honors student Annie Jose began college with no direction for her career path. She began a position as a rehab therapy technician, which spurred her decision to go into the medical field. “My creativity and skills in mathematics helped me realize that medical engineering was the field I wanted,” stated Jose.

While at work, Jose noticed that the hospital did not have models to teach students or new therapists. She decided to take on this challenge as her Honors capstone project. After some research, she decided a pelvis and spine model would provide the most benefit. The goal was to keep the model cheap but also be durable. 3-D printing offered the qualities needed.

After researching drawings and pictures of the pelvis and spine, Jose used CT scans to create a digital image. After several setbacks with the appearance of the 3-D printings, Jose was able to fine-tune her approach and achieve a quality product.

Jose presented her model to her co-workers who were impressed with the accuracy of the model and believed it would be beneficial in their demonstrations to patients. Jose said, “This project helped me understand the difficulties that come with building for use in hospital settings. After the month of work on this project, I understand and support the fact that medical models are so expensive.”