StC News
Carey Pohanka and Collin Mistr '16 win Veterans Affairs Innovation Creation Series Award.
Carey Pohanka, Upper School Instructional Technology teacher, and senior Collin Mistr connected this summer to take part in the Veterans Affairs Innovation Creation Series, a yearlong project to design and develop technologies to improve care and quality of life for veterans with disabilities. The project culminated in a two-day competition where computer/engineering wunderkind Mistr came up with a compartmentalized water bottle with a rotating wheel that organizes and doles out pills. It was designed for a female veteran who takes 24 medicines in different combinations eight times a day.
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“My favorite part was being able to show Collin how the talents he has with computers can be used to help other people,” Pohanka said. “It was also great to show him how the design thinking projects we did in our Make class are the same way we would approach a design challenge in real life.”
After the design phase, Pohanka and Mistr’s group, who called themselves the Drug Pushers, printed a prototype via 3D printer and took home the $1,000 first-place prize for the pill box challenge part of the competition.
The design was loaded on the National Institutes of Health web site (http://tinyurl.com/medstogo) so that anyone can access, even improve upon if desired, download and print. Mistr also designed a cell phone app with an alarm to alert veterans when pills should be taken.
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