I briskly walked to the largest conference room in the building to prepare for our first meeting of the day, a meeting I had been looking forward to upon arrival at FHI 360: a meeting with Dr. Nimmi Ramanujam, a professor at Duke University who co-developed a POCkeT colposcope. Luckily, one of our mentors gave us a brief lesson prior to this lecture, so we were able to better understand the implications of the new technology.
We started off by learning how cervical cancer has increased significantly in low resource settings, despite the opposite trend taking place in other countries around the world. This is partly due to the difficulty presented by continual referrals/visits to secondary and tertiary medical facilities; in other words, the accessibility. To combat this problem, Dr. Ramanujam and her team worked to find a way to combine all of these “steps” – Screening (VIA/HPV), Diagnosis (Colposcopy – Cryo/LEEP), Treatment(Cancer Treatment) – into one visit, yielding her invention.
The POCKeT or Point of Care Tampon Colposcope is a diagnostic device that is close up to the cervix, contrary to the current colposcopes which are designed to look from the outside. They went through many types, from the Gen 3 which required an external power unit, to a Gen 4 which was ultra portable and had a reflector cone, the Alpha that was characterized by a slim design and on board controls (and collaborated with international companies) to finally the Beta, that can be plugged into a USB port on a smartphone, computer, and more. It does not have to use a speculum, in fact, her team has worked to developed a curved inserter that has been proven to cause significantly less pain than the widely-used speculums. The pocket colposcope has a light and camera button, with a “switch” that slides back and forth to alter the magnification of the picture. It was incredible learning about this newly developed technology, and the scientific aspect, but also the potential consequences that arise with commercialization. I never realized the complexity of such an idea, and how by solely wanting to make a difference/impact on the world, you have to take into account a myriad of other things. This presentation went well over the designated hour, but it was well worth it. It was incredibly interesting, and I would love to take part in something as amazing as her work.
Following this meeting, we enjoyed a short lunch break, again consisting of a homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Later in the day we presented our CTI video pitch to Dr. Dorflinger, among other members of the team.
