Tim Jager: DMC worked with Lurie Children's Hospital to create a one of a kind test chamber that's used for diagnosing sweat abnormalities in children.
Darren Jones: CAMP stands for the Center of Autonomic Medicine and Pediatrics.
Tim Jager: It's an environment where you're raising the temperature of a person to make them sweat.
Debra Weese-Mayer: We developed this program because we saw an apparent need among the children with rare diseases who we have the privilege of caring for and following.
Tim Jager: Outside of our typical industrial systems, this has got a very human impact part of it.
Debra Weese-Mayer: When your child has symptoms that nobody can explain, it's scary and frustrating. The chamber has allowed us to comfort parents.
Tim Jager: The control loop is closed using temperature sensors on the patient, so we're essentially controlling their skin temperature. We're elevating their skin temperature. The primary design considerations were: number one, safety. The second most important design consideration would be the comfort of the patient. We thought a lot about the type of heat lamps that would be used. There's different types. There are some that heat up very gently, and there are some that will heat up very rapidly. We wanted it to be as non-evasive as possible.
While we were designing this system, we specifically selected components that would optimize that comfort. We chose a National Instruments Compact RIO controller as the brains of this system. We selected this because it had all the necessary requirements from a performance, safety, tolerance, accuracy standpoint to do what we needed done.
Jesse Batsche: All three elements and all three layers of that software system are developed using the LabVIEW development environment: LabVIEW running on Windows at the HMI level, LabVIEW for Real-Time on the Compact RIO Controller, and then the LabVIEW FPGA development environment. The staff at Lurie Children's Hospital, they're really great to work with. One thing that was unique is that they were very excited and engaged.
Debra Weese-Mayer: Working with DMC was a spectacular experience for us, because we actually found kindred spirits who understood what our needs were for building a chamber specific to children.
Anna Kenny: We got put in contact with Darren Jones. We talked to him and described our vision. We described what we wanted to do, and how we wanted it to be with children. He was actually excited about it.
Debra Weese-Mayer: Knowing that we had partners, very equal partners, who listened to every single request - and there were many.
Anna Kenny: We got the impression that he actually cared. He cared about the project as much as we did.
Darren Jones: Working with their team has been great. They've got a high level of enthusiasm for their work. We also worked with the architect of this area of the building, to make sure that the building and the area in it was constructed in a way that allows the system to function properly.
Tim Jager: It was a lot of fun working with the team actually, because you could tell they were so passionate about this project.
Debra Weese-Mayer: By having this wonderful team work between an engineering team and a translational medicine team, we were able to produce a product that gives us what we need to answer medical questions and to improve health care.