Meet sKan: Q&A with the winners of the James Dyson Award 2017
The James Dyson Award celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers. Four undergraduate students from McMaster University, Canada, were chosen from just over a thousand applications as the winners of this year’s competition thanks to their potentially life-saving device, called the sKan, which aims to detect melanoma.
Michael Takla, 23, Rotimi Fadiya, 22, Prateek Mathur, 23, and Shivad Bhavsar, 23 all worked on the award-winning device and spoke to one of our Dyson journalists about how they came up with their innovative idea, what it means to them to win the James Dyson Award, and most importantly what they are planning to do with the £30,000 prize money.
What is the problem?
Melanoma is harmless if detected early, however it still claims hundreds of thousands of lives around the world annually. It accounts for 80% of all skin cancer-related deaths. Research from clinics in the US shows doctors can only properly differentiate normal lesions from melanoma about 1 in 30 times. These two factors mean that melanoma is often misdiagnosed and detected too late. Investigating current diagnosis methods, we discovered they are often based only on a visual inspection. We aim to add a quantitative measure to this procedure to improve its accuracy and decrease the risk of delayed discovery.
What is the sKan?
The sKan is, in a sense, a skin thermometer. It creates a thermal map of a region of your body, looking for specific temperature differences. A computer program then analyses the data and identifies sections that could be deemed abnormal. After reading some research from John Hopkins about the thermal recovery of melanomas, we developed the sKan to help detect this type of skin cancer.
How does it work?
We know that when our skin is cooled (for example with an ice cube) it takes some time for it to recover back to its normal temperature. Research shows that cancerous tissue recovers more rapidly than healthy tissue. Using this knowledge, we created a device that can accurately track the thermal recovery of a lesion and the surrounding skin.
Frankly speaking, we found it quite unacceptable that so many lives are lost annually from something that could be easily avoided if detected earlier. We also found it interesting that the primary method of melanoma detection has not changed at all in the past decades, as it still relies on visual inspection.
Our inspiration continued as we discovered research completed at John Hopkins University showing they were able to detect melanoma using high-end infrared cameras. We made it our goal to make a device that would be an affordable version of the infrared cameras while maintaining the same level of sensitivity. We hope this device can be one day be used by physicians as a second opinion and by the average individual in the comfort of their own home to promote early detection.
Did you encounter any problems while designing or developing the device?
We went right to the wire when it came to the software. The night before we had to submit our application we were all still sat around at 11pm, trying to fix a bug. We had about six or seven hours to go and finally we started to see the data coming through to our screens and we realised we’d cracked it.
After attaining an understanding of the problem, we looked at infrared cameras and how they are able to detect temperatures. We found the presentation of a thermal map appealing. This lead us to determine that our device should be able to produce a report of any significant findings and a thermal map.
Next we needed to figure out how everything would be done prior to the results of the test. How will we measure the temperature of the area? (i.e. turn the changing temperature on the skin into data). How will we transfer this data? How will we accurately make sense of this data? How can we present the data? What is considered significant information? After coming up with a plan to resolve each task, we then applied the constraints to figure out the details of each component. These constraints included cost, sensitivity, size, ease of repeat-ability and speed.
What makes the sKan different to other melanoma diagnostic tools?
Our device is able to measure very minute temperature differences on the skin using inexpensive thermistors as opposed to a high-end infrared camera which could cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. It could be made within a price range that a family or dermatology clinic could afford.
At the moment it is still too big to scan some smaller, harder-to-reach areas of skin — it has to be on a flat surface. But we are looking to improve our hardware to make sure it can handle more areas of your body.
So how much will the sKan cost?
Our goal would be for the market cost of the sKan to be around $1,000. This is based on the relative low cost of our components and our desire to make a device that family practices can afford.
What does the future hold for sKan?
The next stage for our invention is to undergo pre-clinical testing. We hope to begin testing the sKan on patients with melanoma as this will allow us to identify areas that may need improvement and help shape any future design adjustments.
We also have several technical improvements to make on the device that are only made possible because of the funding received from the James Dyson Award. Of course we’ll also file for a patent.
We’d also like to develop the sKan to a level of performance where it can receive FDA approval. From there we hope that it will become a tool family physicians use, alongside their visual inspection, to detect melanoma better.
What do you think an engineer is?
We think an engineer is an individual who is passionate about solving problems that improve society. An engineer is driven by a desire to reach beyond the status quo and change the world through innovation. An engineer believes in the power that great design and creativity can have in shaping our world. An engineer is resourceful, making use of every tool and bit of knowledge they have to meet and exceed design requirements, which is paramount as the world shifts its focus towards efficiency and efficacy.
What does winning the James Dyson Award mean to you?
Being declared the international winner of the James Dyson award means the world to us. It means that we can continue to pursue our dream of creating a medical device that improves and saves people’s lives. Winning the James Dyson Award is a testament to the hard work involved in our engineering education. We are truly honoured and humbled at this remarkable opportunity.
Read more about how the sKan was chosen as the winner of the 2017 James Dyson Award here.
The sKan device is a working prototype, which is still under development. It is not yet ready for use in a clinical setting or FDA approved, but this is the inventors’ ambition.
