Silver
Our human practices includes several aspects, such as biosafety, social activity and public education. Since Carindex is a genetically engineered product, our work is to focus on promoting the knowledge of genetically engineered product and surveying on people's concern about it.
Self-learning
1. The Third International Symposium on Epigenetic Genomics：
In order to complete our project and product, we need various knowledge from different fields. In May, 2017, the whole team participated in the third International Symposium on Epigenetic Genomics organized by the National Chung Cheng University. In this conference, we learned a lot from the professors and asked them a lot of question, including oral health studies. We had received a lot of precious information from the conference, we also had some discusses on the Biosafety with those lecturers. They helped us to ensure that our product are safety enough protect us and the environment.
2. Safety Training：
All of us participated in the safety training held by Chung Cheng University in the middle of September,to learn what potentially dangers may happen while we are working on our experiments, also how these dangers can be avoided.
3. MIT beyond food mini bootcamp：
Since one of our goals is to win the entrepreneurship special prize, we participated in the "MIT beyond food mini bootcamp" held in Taiwan during May, 2017. Through this two-day camp, we learned a lot from many entrepreneurs in this field and experienced operating as a businessman. This gave us a clearer and better idea for our entrepreneurship plan.
Engagement with local
1.Product Pamphlet：
In order to let the public understand our product in an easy way, we handed out pamphlets. In the pamphlet, we briefly introduced how our product is used, the technology applied, letting them know that Carindex is a genetic engineered product. For the biosafety, we introduced the kill switch in our gene circuit design in order to introduce the concept of biosafety, and how safe our product.
2. 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 rounded understanding on Taiwan's health insurance.
What’s worse is that this leads to the abuse of health insurance system, resulting in the waste of social resources and rising the burden of state finances.
Carindex is expected to be able to contribute to the country's health insurance system, since the users will be able to know and improve their oral condition with it.
Due to the nature of dental caries, they are easily ignored by patients since it don't hurt at the beginning.
Nonetheless, it would be too late to go to the dentist after feeling the pain. The worst condition might end up with doing a tooth implantation, which is painful and costly to the patient and the government.
Carindex can help users on early caries detection so that potential patient can go to the dentist early and cure dental caries before it became serious, which save the health insurance system and the patient time and money.
We want to let the public to learn more about the health insurance system and also having a correct concept about it, so we made a series of detailed introduction about it.
We explained the meaning of health insurance and it's condition in Taiwan over the past few years.
We hope that, this could give the public a correct concept and lead to a better use of the health insurance system.
Education engagement
1. Synthetic Biology Camp:
We set up plans to promote synthetic biology. We went to universities and senior high schools, introduced iGEM, synthetic biology and our project to the students so that they can understand biotechnology as well as the various aspects of the impacts from it. Many students had concerns about genetic engineered product at first, however, after introducing what we are doing and also the kill switch that we designed, we ease their concern. According to the feedbacks we collected after class, most of them grasped a better concept of synthetic biology, genetic engineering, and also the biosafety.
Professional Visiting
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 product more fitting to the market, we invited the CEO of the Renew Biocare Corporation Mr. Ully to discuss the current development of the device. During the discussion, we got a chance to know the similar products on the market. We absorbed the relevant advantages of those products and managed to apply them onto our product to improve the whole project.
Furthermore, this company is one of the leading dental materials companies in the world, so we also asked them to help us check whether our product is safe and forward-looking.
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. Visiting Dentists
We visited multiple dentists in order to understand the actual needs of the patient and their actual oral condition. Furthermore, dentist had a better understanding about what users really concerned about, especially the safety of our product. Those information helped us to get closer to meet the demands of the public.
Survey
1. Oral Condition Survey:
In order to understand the oral status of the community in Taiwan, whether they have right concept of oral health care, and their thoughts on our product, we conducted an online survey. The survey results are as below:
Total sample number is 678 people.
Summary
From the graphs above, we can see that although the average level of concern for oral health is high, and more than half of the people go to dentist regularly, still, more than 80% of people have oral diseases. Much more worse than those that don’t go to the dentist regularly. So we think that preventive oral treatment is necessary in Taiwan and Carindex is here to solve the problem.
2. GMP Concern:
Genetic engineered product has always been an issue of concern to the public. In order to understand how many people are skeptical about it, we conducted a series of surveys, including online questionnaires, written form questionnaires and booth activities. We managed to build an equal platform for communication of the public, not only to tell them about what we know about genetic engineered product but also listen to their thoughts. After the survey, we held public booth, university camps,
and experiment activities for senior high school students.
Finally, we made a analysis how public think about genetic engineered product before and after these activities. The results are as follows:
Total sample is 156 people.
Summary
From the graphs above, they showed that we not only gave people a better understanding about genetic engineered product but also dispelled their misunderstandings of it after interacting with them.
3. Rick assessment:
Based on this result, most people are concerned about the eco-environment and human health. So, we confirm the biosafety of our product both on user and environment aspect.
Q：What if the bacteria ( like E.coli) get out of the device ?
A：We have a system called kill switch which and it will be turned on if bacteria break out the device, the switch will be turned on, and the toxin protein, mazF, will express toxicity, then kill E.coli by cutting its mRNA.
Q：How will you deal with the consumptive materials includes three glide glass after using?
A：Although our consumables seem like it can just be used one time, we have a kill switch to let we recycle them after customers have used. We try to avoid of doing great harm to environment in this way.
