Anyone who has ever enjoyed a Starburst realizes that the wrapper can feel maddeningly impossible to remove.
The tangy candy itself is soft, but often the wrapper seems fused. Getting to that sweet, chewy experience requires patience. And sometimes, that wrapper gets ripped.
But now try opening a Starburst with a $2 million medical robotics system.
That was the scene Thursday and Friday at Oak Park and River Forest High School, where about 100 students gave it their best shot with the Da Vinci Xi robotic surgical system from California-based Intuitive.
This very impressive, and very expensive, piece of machinery consists of three parts – a table with a dome-like object with holes that contains the Starbursts and simulates a patient, with a series of robotic arms protruding from above; a console where students lean into a viewfinder and operate the arms remotely to unwrap a Starburst; and finally a video monitor so everyone else can see what is going on inside
Perhaps best of all, students like sophomore Hector Lopez-Cano got to eat their Starburst after unwrapping it. The task took him about 30 seconds.
But this isn’t supposed to be fun, per se. It’s about helping OPRF students like Lopez-Cano get a handle on a potential future career in the medical field.
“You have to be very precise with what you’re doing,” Lopez-Cano said. “I play a lot of video games. If you play VR, I guess you’re precise and you know how things move.”
Freshman Mimi Steffen agreed with Lopez-Cano that operating the system felt like a VR (or virtual reality) video game.
“It felt like everything was right there, but it wasn’t at the same time,” Steffen said. “It felt surreal kind of, because it was in front of my face, but it wasn’t. It’s very intricate and detailed and it’s harder than you really think.”
One of the four Intuitive representatives said using a Starburst better simulates the dexterity of the machine, and under normal circumstances – like a real medical procedure – the da Vinci Xi would be used for thorax surgery, roughly from the neck to the belt line on a human body.
There are thousands of these systems in use globally, but OPRF is the first high school in the state that was selected to host the Health Career Robotics Collaborative, in partnership with the school’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) Division, nursing program and Medical Club. Usually, something like this is reserved for colleges and universities.
Senior Ashton Sutter is a Medical Club member and comes from a medically inclined family. His mom works for a gene therapy company, his dad is a pharmacist and his uncle is a radiologist.
Is he thinking about going into surgery, thanks to the event? Well …
“I don’t know, but this definitely introduces me to it,” Sutter said. “Seeing how cool this is, it’s definitely there in my mind.
He assumed the system would be really complicated to use, but was delighted to realize it wasn’t. And yes, he did unwrap the Starburst without ripping the wrapper, but also didn’t eat the candy.
The event was made possible through OPRF’s partnership with the Health Career Collaborative, a branch of the National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE). Supported by Main Line Health and the National Board of Medical Examiners, the program was provided at no cost to students.
OPRF’s Medical Club has collaborated with HCC’s Chicago chapter and Loyola University medical students to mentor students on diverse health topics and career pathways since earlier this year.
Allison Hennings is OPRF’s nursing teacher and the 55-member Medical Club sponsor, and she said the event was open to any student. She started coordinating it back in June, which isn’t a surprise when you consider the physical act of getting the three bulky pieces of machinery into a second-floor room (pro tip: get the buildings and grounds team to use the freight elevator) and then the school electrician had to put in different circuits to accommodate the electrical.
“There was a lot of collaboration across lots of different teams to get this in place,” Hennings said.
Four months of work, but it was worth it for what the kids learned, especially related to STEAM, or Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics. The feedback was positive.
“Last session, I was talking with a couple of younger students who said, ‘Wow, now maybe I can be an actual surgeon,’” Hennings said Thursday. “I think it’s really exciting and I think being able to have these amazing opportunities, it really eliminates all barriers for kids and gives really equitable access to all our students.”
Although regrettably a reporter wasn’t allowed by Intuitive policy to try the da Vinci Xi, Hennings did, and it was sweet.
Like a Starburst, for example.
“It’s way harder than you think it is,” she said. “I think the kids are actually really good at it. Because a lot of them play video games, they are used to this manual dexterity that is far superior to someone who doesn’t play video games.”