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High school science projects can be repetitive and unimaginative, but Anya Pogharian shocked spectators with her invention for the 2014 Google Science Fair. The 17-year-old invented a dialysis machine, which cost her $500 to make, as opposed to the usual $30,000.
Dialysis is a treatment for kidney failure that removes waste and extra fluid from the blood using a filter and one machine can cost. The process takes about four hours and must be done twice a week. While volunteering in the dialysis department of Montreal General Hospital, Pogharian developed an interest in the patients and their treatment, including the machines that helped them.
“I was fascinated by the machines and the processes, so I started doing research and I was struck by how expensive the machines are, especially in the developing world,” she said.
Courtesy of Anya Pogharian.
In an attempt to see if it would be possible to reduce the cost of machines, so more people would have access to them, she decided to create her own machine. With little direction or clue where to begin, she began interviewing doctors and experts about the machines.
“I wanted to know what components were really necessary, what we could take out and when I talked to doctors, I realized they didn’t really know about the mechanics of the machines, so I talked to even more people and one of the things I was told was that I needed to create a code,” she said.
This was, she explained, the biggest challenge of the project; teaching herself to write a 600-line code to ensure the prototype worked. After several failures at coding, she finally hacked it.
Pogharian had to contact manufacturers around the world to get the necessary parts for the dialysis machine and that was another challenge.
“Manufacturers sell in bulk, so I had to approach them and convince them to give me just one item, which was really hard, so I had to be innovative and eventually they sent me sample items,” she said.
Several doctors have praised Pogharian, but have pointed out that her machine requires much more work because the cost of dialysis largely comes from the use of parts that cannot be reused. These disposable parts weren’t a central part of Pogharian’s machine.
After spending about 300 hours on the machine, Pogharian knows that her machine will require years’ worth of improvements and is working on a second prototype now.
Pogharian has received several awards and been offered the chance to test with real blood this summer by Héma-Québec. She hopes to become a doctor one day.