GW Engineering Alumnus and Professor Partner to Revolutionize Medical Device Management


April 26, 2024

Opal HTM team members, L to R: engineering grad students Sanchit Vijay and Mobolaji Shobanke; nursing student Tabitha Northrup; Connor Roberts; SAIL Center Director Crystel Farina; nursing student Aissatou Thiam; Ekundayo Shittu.

Opal HTM team members, L to R: engineering grad students Sanchit Vijay and Mobolaji Shobanke; nursing student Tabitha Northrup; Connor Roberts; SAIL Center Director Crystel Farina; nursing student Aissatou Thiam; Ekundayo Shittu. (Courtesy E. Shittu)

In the article "Alumnus and Professor Partner to Bring Revolutionary Medical Sensor to Market," GW Today detailed Opal HTM, a technology that monitors the usage of expensive biomedical devices, developed by Connor Roberts, a double alumnus of GW Engineering, alongside Professor and Department Chair of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Ekundayo Shittu. Opal HTM is meant to aid hospital managers in managing these devices with limited resources by solving their two main problems: inventory optimization and maintenance optimization. 

Here is an excerpt from the article: "Opal HTM’s signature technology is a small module that attaches to a device’s power port, gathering and wirelessly reporting data about how often that device is used, what it’s used for and how much power it consumes. To alert users to issues that may require attention, it uses an algorithm trained to track and recognize device use. If an average hospital bed consumes a certain kilowattage per day, for instance, a bed consuming double or a tenth of that amount would trigger an alert."

Read the full article on GW Today.