Back to School at MedCAD: Nine Years of Internships

Every summer for the past nine years, MedCAD has opened its doors to a small group of Ursuline Academy seniors, one at a time for two weeks each, for a firsthand look at how a patient-specific implant comes together. This year’s group included Addison Smith and Mary Claire Richardson, who left with a very different picture of the field than the one they walked in with.

“I think the part of the experience that will stick with me the most is how there are so many steps and moving parts that go into actually creating a personalized medical device,” Addison told us. She’d arrived thinking of an implant as a single object to be produced, but by the end of her first week, she’d filed regulatory paperwork, sat in on design reviews, and learned the case number system that tracks every device through the building.

Mary Claire was also surprised by the minutia of the process, including the physical parts she hadn’t considered: the guide that shows a surgeon exactly where to cut, the model of the bone being replaced, the piece being removed. “I had no idea more pieces were made,” she said, “and they are just as important as the actual implant itself.” She spent an afternoon and a morning watching the quality team inspect a patient’s models piece by piece before they shipped, a level of scrutiny she hadn’t expected.

While they were with us, both students learned to use MedCAD’s haptic design tool to create something of their own. Addison created a cube of faces, and Mary Claire made a “mood cube” shaped like a mouse. These small projects walked them through the same design-to-print pipeline that MedCAD uses on an actual implant. Mary Claire also spent time with the design team building a cut guide for a foot procedure, tying her two weeks directly to MedCAD’s newest clearance work in foot and ankle.

 “I had never really considered working with the medical field before,” Mary Claire said, “but through this internship, it’s definitely something I’m keeping open as an option.” For Addison, the experience showed her a lane she hadn’t known existed.

“It showed me a way I can incorporate my love of art into a science-oriented career that truly helps others.” – Mary Claire Richardson

Asked what they’d tell another student weighing a future in medical devices or biomedical sciences, both landed on the same idea from different angles. In the words of Mary Claire, “It can change the lives of people with a single product.”