53 - COVIDCast #4 - Prototyping the SaniPack to Help Protect Frontline Healthcare Workers

Summary: This episode is a continuation of our series of COVID-related content. Jonathan Wakim and I speak with the SaniPack team, consisting of Omar Abdoun, Khaled Abdoun, Lina Ibrahim, Ahmed Aly, Zonia Moore, and Doreen Lam. Each of the team members is a student at the Perelman School of Medicine, and Doreen Lam is currently one of the VPs of Curriculum for Penn HealthX. Together, their group developed the Sanipack, a pouch that can rapidly decontaminate an N95 mask and enhance its usability and shelf life to help protect healthcare workers. HealthX actually provided some tiered, non-dilutive grant funding so that the team could rapidly prototype the device to begin testing them and piloting them in the clinics. In the episode, we chat about how the team formed, the problem they were looking to solve, how they came up with the solution, how they worked as a team to put together a pitch for the Johns Hopkins COVID competition in under a week, and what the next steps are to get the device created and ready for use. It was a lot of fun to have everyone on one zoom call, and I’m glad we have such thoughtful and innovative students at Penn who are heeding the call to help in the COVID crisis. - Ryan O'Keefe