It might not seem like an obvious connection; the TD School’s Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation degree and patients with traumatic spinal injuries.
But it turns out, there’s a crucial link.
3DMorphic’s vertebrae model
Two UTS TD School graduates were recently instrumental in assisting a former politician to regain mobility after a serious fall.
Jessica Wind and Chloe Amaro are recent graduates of the BCII degree, and both work for the medical device company 3DMorphic.
Over Easter 2022, a surgeon contacted the company with an urgent request for a patient who had badly injured his spine in a fall and needed a vertebral body replacement implant.
3DMorphic is the only company in Australia with the capacity to design and manufacture ‘just-in-time’ patient-specific spinal implants.
Chloe and Jessica are part of the team that works on the 3D design and manufacturing of an implant to fit the patient’s unique spinal structure.
We had no idea who the patient was, but we knew it was urgent, so the design, manufacture and delivery were completed in record time. Within two days, it was ready to be implanted.
While all this was going on, Bob Carr, the former longest-serving NSW Premier and former Federal Foreign Affairs Minister, was lying in a hospital bed contemplating the possibility of a drastic change in his lifestyle: “My mind was racing – had my life just taken a sudden turn for the worse? I was in despair waiting for the ambulance to transfer me to Prince of Wales thinking about what my life would look like with limited mobility. The future looked grim.”
Mr Carr is a keen walker and health and exercise devotee but when he contracted Covid, the virus left him weak and dehydrated. He fainted trying to stand up and the subsequent fall crushed his L2 vertebra.
Jessica Wind (L), Bob Carr and Chloe Amaro
The former Premier and Senator rejected the less radical options of learning to live with the injury or having some generic device that carried a dubious success rate. After a long and gruelling operation, the 3D3D-printed printed vertebral body replacement was fixed into place, and Mr Carr was up and about within days.
It was only after the operation that Chloe and Jessica found out who the patient was and they were thrilled when he visited the 3DMorphic offices: “It was exciting and very rewarding to meet Mr Carr post-operatively to see how he was recovering and engaging with the implant. Meeting him in person made it more impactful to understand his recovery and how he is living an active life.”
Jessica and Chloe’s work is a classic example of the versatility and real-world application of the BCII degree for graduates.
Jessica says her studies taught her ways to approach problems from different angles and think outside the square: “I initially thought that when you solved a problem, it would always be to the stakeholder brief provided."
Without completing the BCII course, I would never have thought to evaluate the brief itself to see if it actually answers the problem.
– Jessica Wind, BCII graduate
Chloe says students should take advantage of everything the TD School has to offer.
Take the full opportunity to meet different people and learn the transdisciplinary skills you usually wouldn’t be exposed to in your core degree because this is what will help you stand out in the workforce.
– Chloe Amaro, BCII graduate
As for Bob Carr, he’s a huge fan and describes the degree as ‘spectacularly cross-disciplinary’: ”When I found out about Chloe and Jessica’s qualifications, I found it amazing that they can do the BCII degree and then end up somewhere like 3DMorphic.“
I was astounded by the aptness of it [the BCII degree] and the innovation, and that they are both now perfectly placed in a company that is making an immediate contribution to the well-being of people struggling with injury. It’s a degree that can obviously lead anywhere.
– Bob Carr, former Premier and federal Foreign Affairs Minister
For Chloe and Jess, it led them to helping Bob Carr preserve what he describes as ’the precious gift of mobility’.