About Us
Team CARDIO is a student-led research team part of the Gemstone Honors Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. Our team is composed of six undergraduates from Class of 2019 with a passion for scientific discovery and scholarly learning.
A Societal IssueRoughly 6 million individuals live with pacemakers, worldwide. Pacemakers are typically surgically installed biomedical devices which regulate cardiac rhythms in patients with arrhythmia or other complications. The average battery life for a pacemaker battery is about 5-7 years. Replacing the battery requires additional surgery. |
The Root of the ProblemThere are 6000 deaths per year due to complications from pacemaker replacement surgeries, globally. Other complications include incision-site infections, septic shock, immune rejection, and blood clots. There has to be a better way to ensure that cardiac pacemakers continue to function for beyond their current battery lives. |
Our ApproachOur team, CARDIO, saw the importance of a need for an alternative energy source for cardiac pacemakers - reducing or even eliminating the need for surgery. We are prototyping a system that uses piezoelectric technology to capture and store mechanical vibration from cardiac pulsation into usable energy. We hope that our research will lay the foundation for technology that can further lead to the development of a heart-powered pacemaker in the next couple of years. |
How can we prototype a piezoelectric energy-harvesting system from the simulated mechanical pulsation of a 3D-printed heart model?
We hope that our research contributes heavily to the development of a heart-powered cardiac pacemaker.