“I don’t want people to think this is a robotics center," says Greg Fischer. "We really want to engage everybody in developing these systems, from data privacy experts to mechanical engineering students interested in prosthetics to computer scientists with a passion for telemedicine. PracticePoint not only allows interdisciplinary teams to get together—it is built for it.”
PracticePoint also addresses a long-standing challenge for healthcare researchers—limited access to clinical settings and equipment. When Christopher Nycz ’16 MS, ’18 PhD, was studying robotics engineering at WPI and needed to use devices such as MRI machines that were not in the lab, he had to secure access to sites off campus. Today,as a research scientist at PracticePoint, he knows just how fortunate students are to have easy access to equipment to quickly make changes, fix problems, and manufacture components.