Retirees With Space-Age Expertise Help Hospitals : Health: A volunteer group of 15 engineers and scientists is being honored for its innovative work in meeting medical challenges.
When Lon Isenberg was a boy, his avid interest in science fiction led him to fantasize about becoming an aerospace engineer.
Isenberg eventually lived out that childhood fantasy. But while studying chemistry at UCLA and chemical engineering at USC, he acquired an even more elusive dream. Working part time as a medical research assistant, he used to wonder how space technology might be applied to medicine.
It would take more than 30 years before Isenberg would be able to bring his two fascinations together.
Two years ago, the 67-year-old Jet Propulsion Laboratory retiree joined the Volunteer Professionals for Medical Advancement, a cadre employing aerospace and medical technology to come up with ideas to improve the quality of hospital services.
“It’s sort of like a domestic Peace Corps, aimed at medical and health care areas,” Isenberg said.
The 15-member group was founded three years ago by another retired JPL engineer, Herman Bank.
On Friday, Bank, Isenberg and a few other VPMA members will be in Washington to receive a Public Service Excellence Award, sponsored by the Public Employees Roundtable, a coalition of 30 management and professional associations and other retirees.
VPMA was one of five organizations chosen from 300 nominations nationwide. Roundtable’s regional branch will first reward VPMA with a certificate of recognition on Monday.
“It’s an interesting concept that volunteers with engineering and science backgrounds help hospitals improve their quality of service,” said Joan Keston, executive director of the Roundtable’s national office. “I don’t know of another group like it.”
The concept, however, is not unique. About 20 years ago, Bank headed a joint project that Caltech, JPL, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration formed along with some Los Angeles area hospitals. The $80,000 program included development of a bag that increases the shelf life of stored blood and an improved X-ray technique that eliminated multiple exposures. But after three years the program was put on hold--until Bank, now 75, resurrected it on a volunteer basis. After retiring in 1986 with 38 years at JPL, Bank was instrumental in the founding of Associated Retirees of Caltech/JPL, a 500-member social and technical group. Bank subsequently formed VPMA, an offshoot of Associated Retirees, and recruited volunteers interested in the medical field.
VPMA members, who meet monthly at JPL in Pasadena, put out a monthly newsletter and sponsor lectures. So far, the organization’s volunteers have participated in seven research projects at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, five at the City of Hope in Duarte and one at Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles.
Bank sends flyers to hospital directors, who give doctors and other staff members request forms on which they can outline the nature of problems that need solutions and return them to VPMA.
Hospitals are pleased to get the free science and engineering consultation, which many cannot afford, Bank said. The hospitals usually pay for the projects with grants.
“Projects are selected in accordance with their importance and value to medical advancement, and within limitations of our capabilities,” Bank said.
Last year, Isenberg helped design a “Challenge Isolation Chamber” for Huntington Memorial’s Asthma and Allergy Center. The chamber is one of a few in the nation that pinpoints the causes of bronchial asthma, Dr. Michael Glovsky, the center’s medical director said.
Glovsky and Isenberg visited Tulane University Medical School in New Orleans to study its isolation chamber before Huntington’s $100,000 stainless steel room took form.
“It’s been fantastic,” Glovsky said of the VPMA effort. “These people are extremely capable and enthusiastic. They’re first-rate scientists. We wouldn’t have built the chamber without them. You can’t buy it out of a catalogue.”
The hospital probably saved between $20,000 and $30,000 on the chamber project, Bank said. It took a year to design and construct the facility from scratch, using typical aerospace system engineering, he said.
The rectangular chamber, which is about the size of a small bathroom, is similar to NASA’s clean (or sterilization) room, where a spacecraft is kept before it is sent into space. A single chemical, such as formaldehyde, measured in parts per billion, is put in a vaporizer and filtered through an air system into the chamber in which a patient sits. It takes from 15 minutes to two hours to monitor the lungs and measure the patient’s reaction to the pollutant.
“Hospitals don’t have expertise in engineering and science of this sort,” Bank said. “They use us to help select contractors who do the actual building.”
Also at Huntington Memorial is a software computer program developed by retired computer scientist and VPMA member Ken Tang. The program tracks the progress of premature babies, especially those suffering from lung problems.
At Childrens Hospital, retired engineer Floyd Livingston is developing an instrument to help children with hypoventilation syndrome, a sleeping disorder. The pedals of a bicycle-like apparatus are attached to a child’s feet, and an electric motor drives the limbs back and forth as the child sleeps, helping increase heart activity and blood circulation. It is hoped that the device will allow children with the disorder to sleep without the aid of a respirator.
For the City of Hope, the volunteers are using ultraviolet light in creating a blood sterilization mechanism for transfusions.
Meanwhile, Bank said he hopes the idea of forming professional volunteer groups will spread nationwide. He has sent letters offering free consultation and training to 13 NASA centers.
