How to turn your dissertation into a new business Every year, final year students complete their dissertations and we are often surprised and impressed by the quality of work and the rage of interests that students show. Sometimes, though, the projects keep growing.
Here Jordan answers some of our questions Where did the idea come from to look at surgery? This is a long story but I’ll do my best to give you the shorter version.
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n 2010 Jordan Van Flute started his final year project looking at the performance of keyhole surgery. Since graduating Jordan has turned his dissertation into a new business supporting the training of surgeons.
22 | Cardiff Met Alumni 2013
At the time we chose our dissertation topics I was very much considering the thought of one day becoming a surgeon. I was conscious of the fact that my academic past was less than stellar and so needed to do something standout in order to gain acceptance into medical school.
What did the dissertation look at? I wanted to find out if it was possible to predict how well someone would perform at keyhole surgery, or Laparoscopy, using a battery of cognitive tests. When you operate using new keyhole surgery techniques the surgical field is located on a screen which is remote from the surgeon, as opposed to open surgery where the incision is made and the operation performed directly in the surgeon’s line of sight. Most, if not all surgeons, struggle with the loss of three dimensional perspective and depth perception.
What we wanted to do was replicate these conditions to see how they affected performance on simple tasks. A real problem was gaining access to the surgical equipment required to measure performance. In the end I built a homemade version of the £10,000 simulators used in hospitals. (To be completely honest it was just a wooden box with a webcam inside). However, when you insert a pair laparoscopic forceps into the box to perform basic drills the same experience is achieved. >
For more details on Jordan's company: www.inovus.org