In the News

Conversations with Dr. Lakshman Tamil, director of the Quality of Life Technology Laboratory at UTD inspired Dr. Tim Cogan BS’15, MS’17, Ph.D.’21 to focus his PhD work in Electrical Engineering on the potential uses of artificial intelligence in medical imaging.  

Cogan is now Chief Technology Officer and Tamil is co-founder of MedCognetics, a company that spun out of Cogan’s PhD research at UTD. “We use AI for early cancer screening; right now, specifically for breast cancer, although we’re looking at other areas,” Cogan explained.

Cogan and his colleagues are particularly excited about the potential applications outside of the U.S., where radiologists may be prohibitively expensive or in short supply. He points to a partner organization in India where patients travel a full day or two from their village to get imaged. “And then they’re stuck with this situation where it could take a week or a week and a half to have those images looked at,” he said. “Do you just wait in the city for a whole week before going back to your village? Or if you do decide to go back to your village, do you want to come back?”

MedCognetics’ software means that patients’ images can be reviewed more immediately. “Within a couple of minutes, you could process the case and tell the patient, ‘Yes, you should hang around or no, you’re free to go,’” Cogan said.

For the U.S. market, Cogan emphasized that MedCognetics will not replace radiologists but will instead provide a second read. “I think the best thing is that we have people and AI working together, checking each other’s work,” he added. “Then you get the best possible outcome for the patient.”

Receiving FDA clearance for its breast cancer screening software in December 2022 was a key milestone, according to Cogan. “There are dozens of companies or groups doing work similar to ours, but my understanding is there’s a single digit number of mammography AI groups that have actually have FDA clearance,” he said. “It’s a pretty big hurdle to pass.”

Earlier this year, MedCognetics received a $750,000 grant from the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity. “From the start, we’ve really focused on getting data and partnering with doctors everywhere,” Cogan said.

By gathering data from patients all over the world, MedCognetics aims to train its AI and machine learning technology on diverse populations so it works on every patient and every demographic. “If you take your system and you just train it on a particular type of patient population, it’s going to work really well for those particular patients, but it won’t necessarily work well on another group of patients,” Cogan explained. “People in Southeast Asia have a totally different diet and totally different lifestyle than people in say Central Texas, so cancer will manifest differently. You need your system tuned for people all around the world.”

As this technology improves, it might be applied in other medical settings beyond breast cancer screenings, providing greater access to medical imaging around the world.

A random TikTok video sparked the idea for Sam McBroom MBA’19 to launch Strudel3D, an online business selling 3D-printed fidget keys. “This guy was talking about how a lot of people start 3D printing businesses and it doesn’t work out because they like to like download a bunch of stuff online that’s already out there,” McBroom said.  

The guy in the video asked why people didn’t learn to make their own things—and that’s exactly what McBroom did. He already had an inexpensive 3D printer, so he learned 3D modeling and created fidget keys inspired by computer keyboards. Gamers buy them as desk accessories, and people with ADHD use them to help them focus.   

In January 2022, McBroom launched an Etsy shop to test the market. In just over a year, his Etsy shop has had over 2,500 sales. McBroom says it’s a great test market because there’s very little upfront investment needed. “I’m much more comfortable putting something on there where the customers already are and seeing if people like it versus creating a whole Shopify store just to see if something works,” he explained. Strudel3D also sells through its own website now, too. McBroom still uses the original 3D printer, but it takes about 5 hours for one print, so he’s also purchased another printer that takes about one hour per print.

While earning his MBA at UTD, McBroom took a class in entrepreneurship and submitted an entry in the Big Idea Competition. Learning about the challenge of brick-and-mortar businesses in that class also made him see the benefits of operating online, as he’s doing now. “When you’re doing something online, the landscapes are a lot different and there’s a lot more flexibility in where you can sell,” he said.

Recently McBroom spoke to an elementary school class, and a student asked for advice on getting started. He encouraged them to avoid decision paralysis and just start. “If you’re trying to figure out what to do or where to start,” he said, “just like do things and don’t to give too much thought about whether they’re going to be the thing that’s going to define your life and change everything. Just do things that you would enjoy.”