Without a sliver of doubt, the 21st century has been transformed by an inexorable march of innovation. We live in a world where advanced tech is ubiquitous—it is on a level that would exist solely in the realm of science fiction to laymen just a few decades ago. We often take for granted the computing power of the phone in our pockets which eclipses that of what was available to scientists who first launched rockets to the moon. In the field of medicine, we now have handheld ultrasound machines to visualize images real time on our smartphones. We also have 3D-printed prosthetics that can be customized to suit a patient’s own, unique needs.
Unfortunately, such devices are only imported from beyond our shores. There is yet to be a tech company in the Philippines that manufactures advanced medical machinery. A potential reason why innovation in healthcare technology moves at such a glacial pace here is the lack of partnership between engineers and medical doctors. It often happens that a medical doctor identifies a problem in the clinics—one that may easily be addressed by technological equipment or innovation of sorts—but lacks the technical skills to design such a solution. Conversely, an engineer might devise a machine that doctors in the field do not necessarily need. This lack of synergy is precisely what the UP Surgical Innovations and Biotechnology Laboratory, or UP SIBOL, is set to resolve.
UP SIBOL is a collaboration between the clinicials of the College of Medicine in UP Manilan as well as engineers and scientists from the College of Engineering and College of Science in UP Diliman. Its primary purpose is to join the brightest minds in the country and create novel healthcare solutions. This new initiative was spearheaded by Dr. Edward Wang, a Professor of Orthopedics in the UP College of Medicine and an active consultant at the Philippine General Hospital. The groundwork for UP SIBOL was patterned after the highly innovative institutes of the National University of Singapore (NUS). In NUS, they have the Biomedical Institute for Global Health Research & Technology as well as the Advanced Surgical Training Center.
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