PracticePoint takes several models of clinical suites—an operating room, MRI suite, patient care suite, motion capture labs, rehab areas—and drops them all together in the heart of an engineering school with manufacturing capabilities that include 3D printing, CNC manufacturing, electronics assembly, and test capabilities. Everything that is open to students and faculty, is open to member organizations and sponsors, as well.
Advancing Healthcare through Cyber-physical Systems
PracticePoint is WPI’s membership-based healthcare development and testing facility—a place to advance healthcare technologies and launch better medical, cyber, and physical systems through collaboration. PracticePoint is a resource for designing, prototyping, and evaluating everything from rehabilitative devices to surgical robotics by an associated consortium of academics, industry, healthcare professionals, and users/patients.
The facility includes spaces that look like areas where medical care would take place, but with equipment to study how best to deliver that care: a fully instrumented living space, a state-of-the-art motion capture lab, a 2-bed modular patient care suite, MRI imaging, and a fully functional operating room co-located with advanced manufacturing capabilities. Our advanced manufacturing rooms include a wide array of 3D printing, CNC manufacturing, and electronics assembly and test capabilities.
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The Vision and the Visionary
PracticePoint is many things: an incubator for businesses, a collaborative space for members to meet and exchange ideas, a state-of-the-art research facility for educators and students, and the nexus for innovation that could change the world of healthcare as we know it. But there’s a shared challenge for those who aspire to build technology and solve problems in the healthcare field: they often have limited access to hospital settings and equipment, such as million-dollar imaging machines. PracticePoint to change all that.
For more information on how to get involved, contact:
Catherine Bouthillier
cbouthillier@wpi.edu
(M) 860-428-6840
(O) 508-831-4653