Washington University in St. Louis Begins Its Women’s Health Technologies Initiative

Researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering and the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis have partnered to launch the Women’s Health Technologies Initiative. The program aims to apply engineering technology to develop new strategies to improve the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of conditions affecting the female reproductive system.

The initiative was launched following a successful symposium in January 2020, which was organized by Quing Zhu, the Edwin H. Murty Professor at McKelvey Engineering, and Yong Wang, associate professor of obstetrics & gynecology in the School of Medicine and of electrical & systems engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering.

“I have been working on breast and ovarian cancer research for the past two decades and always have a passion to improve women’s health,” Dr. Zhu said. “My goal is to promote collaboration between clinical and non-clinical researchers and engineers to work on women’s health issues with the hope of elevating the importance of women’s health research.”

The department of biomedical engineering and the department of obstetrics & gynecology at the university established the Collaboration Initiation Grants program. The program provides seed grants of up to $20,000 for one year in support of research. The goal of these grants is to generate sustaining collaboration between engineering and medical school partners that will be competitive for future external funding.

Initial research includes developing a wearable light-based sensor that will provide an early alert for postpartum hemorrhage and devising a new prediction model to guide surgical decision making in female pelvic organ prolapse surgery based on anatomic measurements.