Student Highlights
Testing a ‘point of care device’ for NSW Health

Baxter Langlar, Camron Alley and Ellen Lu worked together as part of a larger team to complete the SCIE3001 program as part of their undergraduate studies.

Baxter is currently in his fourth year of undergraduate studies, completing a Bachelor of Mathematics / Bachelor of Science double degree, majoring in physics and applied mathematics and statistics.

Camron completed a Bachelor of Science, majoring in physics, and is now in his Honours year.

Ellen also completed her Bachelor of Science and is now in her Honours year. She is considering doing a PhD while completing a Bachelor of Mathematics in the coming years.

The Transdisciplinary Capstone (SCIE3001A and SCIE3001B) courses, as part of the Bachelor of Science, involves firstly planning and developing a team project, and then completing the project and communicating findings.

This team was tasked with producing an evaluation report on a ‘point of care test’ (PoCT) device – Accu-Chek (glucose metre) for the NSW Health department.

“We were offered a handful of potential projects, and this seemed the most interesting, unique, and novel to me,” said Camron.

“I chose this topic due to my experience in health care industry and my own user experience in similar medical devices,” said Ellen.

Baxter explains that there were two main tasks that the team completed for the evaluation, including a statistical analysis which provided insight into the measuring capabilities of the device, and interviews with people who would use this device or use similar devices.

“The statistical analysis tested the Accu-Check device against standard evaluation methodology requirements.

“I oversaw how this component of the evaluation process advanced with aid from the other statistics major of the team.

“The information interviews were done by team members who had contact with people who use glucose devices. A set of questions were asked about what is good and bad about the current devices, what would be good in the Accu-Check device, and what features of the Accu-Check device sounded appealing,” said Baxter.

After the team completed their research, they analysed their findings and created a summary of the wants and needs of the target audience.

One of the key aspects of this project was teamwork.

“Our roles were fairly loose, especially at the beginning, but by the end I had effectively taken on a sort of coordinator role within the team.

“I often organised and lead the team meetings and coordinated our individual efforts towards our final goals,” said Camron

“In this project, I majorly contributed my past medical and social science experience and knowledge, rather than the knowledge from my current degree,” said Ellen.

“My role in the team was to oversee the progression of the statistical analysis being the statistic major of the group,” said Baxter.

The focus on combining disciplines to find out of the box solutions was very important for this team.

“My disciplinary skills were helpful was in the statistical analysis. Having developed coding experience in previous research projects, I was often able to help overcome coding errors, allowing the stats majors to keep doing their thing,” said Camron.

“I learnt that we have to consciously allow ourselves to listen to other voices from different disciplines or fields.

“It is very easy to have a tunnel version by only talking to people who are similar to you,” said Ellen.

By collaborating and listening across disciplines, the team was able to build comfort as a group and come up with creative solutions.

“I believe creativity was generated in the team due the comfortability within our group.

“We all felt like we had the ability to speak up and express ideas, hence improving the outcome of the project,” said Baxter.

“When we were relaxed, we could let our imagination run wild. We did not worry about the consequences of criticism as we did not have a traditional team leader.

“In popular culture, we all think of a ‘lone, genius scientist’ working alone in the lab, but thanks to the SCIE course, I know that real-world science is about teamwork,” said Ellen.

“Given the nature of our project, our creativity didn’t influence our outcomes directly as much as our creative problem solving allowed us to achieve our outcomes in an efficient and robust way,” said Camron.

At the end of their project, the team determined that the device was fit for use as point of care device within the standards of NSW Pathology. The device can therefore be distributed and used by the public.

“More importantly however, I think we had many interesting findings from our end user interviews which should be considered by NSW Pathology for the design or introduction of not just future glucose meters, but many similar devices,” said Camron.

Through this project, each team member believes they have learnt necessary skills for entering the workforce.

“I think it was definitely a valuable learning opportunity and the team coordination skills I developed will no doubt be helpful in future projects,” said Camron.

“This course was amazing in the fact that it gave us some real-world experience and I think this will help entering my career journey,” said Baxter.

“My new skills are already helping me. I learned how to network with the physics discipline and that’s how I found my wonderful Honours supervisor!

“I also learnt that communicating and teaming up with people who do not come from science backgrounds prepares us to adjust to real-world work,” said Ellen.

Baxter is very proud of the team’s results and the university’s interest in their findings.

“Having the University show an interest in this project is a ‘wow moment’ for me.

“It shows that I can produce high quality scientific and mathematical work that others appreciate.

“I hope that this recognition can continue all throughout my career, and this gives me confidence that this will occur,” said Baxter.

Next year, Baxter hopes to complete Honours and eventually hopes to obtain a PhD while researching the universe.

After completing his Honours, Camron hopes to take a gap year to travel around Australia, before applying for a PhD in particle physics.

Long term, Ellen hopes to be a researcher in either physics or mathematics after completing further study at the University of Newcastle.

^{* Ellen Lu preferred not to be pictured in this feature.}

Learn more about a Bachelor of Science at the University of Newcastle

Baxter, Camron and Ellen

Baxter Langlar, Camron Alley and Ellen Lu worked together with a larger team to complete the SCIE3001 program as part of their undergraduate studies.