From September 4 – 6, 2023, Professor Dr. Nipon Theera-Umpon, Director of the CMU Biomedical Engineering Institute (BMEI), attended the WorldInvent Singapore 22+23 (WoSG) at D’ Marquee, Downtown East, Singapore and won two awards, a silver medal and a Special Prize from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – for his innovation ‘CMU-DonePorDee - Help Cleft Patients with Innovative Stents’ invented in collaboration with Dr. Suruk Udomsom from BMEI, Associate Professor Marasri Chaiworawitkul, D.D.S., from the CMU Faculty of Dentistry, and Associate Professor Nuntigar Sonsuwan, M.D., from the CMU Faculty of Medicine.
CMU-DonePorDee is a nose stent designed to help children with clefts by preserving the normal nasal structure of the patients during recovery after cleft lip and cleft palate surgery. This innovation is a result of a collaboration between BMEI, the Cleft Centre of the Faculty of Dentistry and the Faculty of Medicine. It combines technologies from several disciplines including 3D scanning and printing, which have been tailor-made for this project. It also drew on expertise from various fields to get a stent that is a perfect fit for the nose shape of each child patient.
In the past four years, more than 2,000 pieces of CMU-DonePorDee have been created and given free of charge to help child patients and their families, and the production process is under constant development for improvement. Now families do not have to wait several days for their CMU-DonePorDee to be made and can get it the same day of treatment without having to make a return trip. During use, there is also a follow-up, either by phone or contact online.
This ongoing collaboration between BMEI and the Faculties of Dentistry and Medicine is a project that helps children recover from surgery after they’ve been given a normal nose structure.