Engagement and education

Our human practice work involves questions relating to public necessary, public acceptance and biosafety. Since our product, Carindex, is a genetically-modified product, GMP, a general concern of the public, we put a lot of effort on discussing about it.

Public engagement

1. Product pamphlet:

In order to let the public understand our product in an easy way, we released pamphlets regarding it. In the pamphlet, we briefly introduced how our product can be used, the technology that is applied, let them know that Carindex is a GMP. Then we tell them about the kill switch in our gene circuit design; let them know the concept of biosafety, at the same time, promoting the safety of our product.

2. Public Booth：

In order to enable our products to actually reach the public, we communicated with the public closely and asked them for feedbacks. From these feedbacks, we modified our products so that it can be more intimate to social needs. We cooperated with a kumquat farm from Taiwan Chiayi famous tourist attractions. In the crowd booth, we showed our prototype and product pamphlet to the public, introduced our project, including knowledge regrading teeth health care, the function of our products and follow-up benefits. Many parents and children showed a great interest in Carindex after the introduction. We had received a lot of feedbacks from the public, and grasp a better understanding to the cavity problem that they had. These precious feedbacks helped us to improve the Carindex and made it in line with the user needs!

3. Taiwan Health Insurance System：

Taiwan's health insurance has always been a discussed issue of social policy. When we conducted the PMR market survey, we found that the general public did not have a complete understanding of Taiwan health insurance. What’s worse, this lead to the abuse of social welfare system, resulting in the waste of social resources and the burden of state finances. Carindex are expected to be able to collaborate with the country's health insurance system, and hoping that through Carindex, users will be able to know and improve their oral condition. Due to the nature of dental caries, they are easily ignored by patients since it won't make them feel hurt at the beginning. Nonetheless, it would be too late to go to the dentist after it hurt. And the worst result might be tooth implantation, a painful and costly procedure to the patient, and to the government pocket as well. In order to save the follow-up medical resources, Carindex can help user made early caries detection so that potential patient can go to the dentist early, cure dental caries before it became serious. We wanted to let the public know about this fact and have a correct concept, so we made a series of detailed introduction of Taiwan national health insurance system. We explained the health insurance situation of Taiwan over the years, the meaning of health insurance. Expectedly, this could teach the public the correct concept to bring more benefits, and to maintain a sustainable development of national resources.

Education engagement

1. Biology Experiment:

To let students learn about what we are doing, we designed a series of fun and easy DNA purification experiment for them. After the activities, I still remembered that many of them were so excited at the DNA that they purified. They said that they enjoyed it a lot and think that such activities are very awesome, hoping to have more opportunities to participate the same thing in the future.

2. Synthetic Biology Camp:

We set up plans to promote synthetic biology right after the summer started. We went to the university and senior high school, introduced the iGEM and synthetic biology, our team project to the students. Hence, they can understand about the biotechnology as well as the various aspects of the impact from it. Many students had having concern about GMP and related issue. After knowing what we were doing, they asked us what if the genetic modified bacteria we made broke out the device, how are we going to deal with it. Then, we told them about the kill switch we designed, ease their concern; at the same time, bring the security concept of biotechnology to them. According to after-class feedback, before the class, most of the students had have the same concern about genetic modified product. However, after this class, most of them grasped a correct and better understanding of synthetic biology, genetic modification, and it security. This eased their concern and make them want to do the same thing in future.

Professional engagement

1. Visiting the Profession:

We visited Professor Mrs. Xiu-mei Chen of Taiwan University of Science and Technology in June this year, and asked her about the technology of detecting the concentration of bacteria on the chip. Then we learned that the chip developed by Professor Chen Xiumei could detect the concentration of many bacteria as well as the one we wanted to detect Streptococcus mutans, S. mutans. Therefore, we asked Professor Chen Xiu Mei about the technology and gained lots of meaningful advices to improve Caridex.

2. Inviting Professions:

In order to make our products closer to the market, we invited the president of the 新芽technology company Mr. Ully to discuss the current development of the device. During discussion, we got to know about similar products on the market. We absorbed the relevant advantages of those products, and managed to apply onto our products, improve the whole project.
Additionally, we invited to the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology teacher Mr. Zhong-guang Chen to teach us how to establish a product business model design, to help us in the subsequent commercialization of the product.

3. Dentist Collaboration:

We visited a number of Taiwan Chiayi local dental clinic: 百利、沃爾、邱. From here, we understood the actual needs of the patient from the perspective of dentists and the patient actual oral cavity situation. We also had a better understanding of common habits of patients. The information helped us move one more step closer the publics. Afterward, we collaborated with them, asking them to help the team define our product internal data. We took the standard dental caries level of ICDAS (International Caries Detection and Assessment System) organization, which is recommend by dentists.

4. Primary school collaboration:

After contacting with the public, we found out that there are chances that parents might be willing to buy this product for their children. So we visited primary school in Chiayi, and asked whether they wanted to cooperate with us and use this device at the school. And we found out that the school would ask the dentist examine the Taiwanese young children every three months. If the children oral condition was not good, the dentist would ask those to see the dentist again after school. However, the process where the dentist checked the children oral condition was often too long, causing many inconvenience. Therefore, the school said that if the device improved it accuracy, they would like do the cooperation.