Green, who has been practicing for two decades, and a UM colleague, biomedical engineer Scott Hollister, had been working for years toward a clinical trial to test the splint in children with pulmonary issues when they got a phone call from a physician in Ohio who was aware of their research.

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Since quitting his day job as a biomedical research engineer, he spends every day organizing and cataloging hundreds of samples in ways that make sense to him.

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Indeed they can be, say a group of scientists and designers led by Harvard University biomedical engineer, Dr. David Edwards.

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