Team:Manchester/HP/Gold
HP Gold
Throughout our project we addressed a variety of Human Practices issues and took into account each stakeholder’s knowledge, experience and opinion to direct our project design. All experimental decisions were guided by intense interactions with the public and important stakeholders interested in raising alcohol awareness. This has enabled the AlcoPatch to be refined, redesigned and progress in cohesion with the public needs and interests. We strived to make sure the insights of potential beneficiaries directed our project throughout the duration of the journey the AlcoPatch has taken.
Please take a look at our [human practices page] for more examples of the interwoven theme of human practices throughout our project.
iGEM Human Pracitices Gold Criteria 2016:
"Demonstrate how you have integrated the investigated issues into the design and/or execution of your project."
Three issues were identified as recurrent themes in our interactions with various stakeholders:
- Our product would have to be cheap, robust and light-weight. For example, our debates with the [local police] highlighted that currently only a select number of officers carry breathalysers due to their weight and cost. This suggests our AlcoPatch could be a great tool, every police officer could have.
This information lead to our [cost analysis] of the AlcoPatch, where the modelling team identified the optimal enzyme and dye concentrations that would yield the lowest cost for a robust performance of the detector for our [cell-free mechanism]. - The Second major design requirement identified by the stakeholder interactions was the need for a very rapid read-out. The [police officers] emphasized the need for a decision within minutes, and our industrial contacts, such as the Technology Officer from [SCRAM Systems] , confirmed that rapid responses would be essential for a marketable device. Also, the CEO of [FredSense] concurred: “Any tool which can accurately read out someone’s blood ethanol concentration would be useful. However, these tests would need to be very quick…”
To address this point, we ran a series of [modelling tests], using real experimental data from our [pilot experiment] to determine the time it would take for the colour to appear under real-world conditions, such as realistic sweat-alcohol concentrations. The insights gained from this modelling exercise confirmed the choice of enzymes and informed us of optimal concentrations for the final design of our AlcoPatch device.
