Blog Posts

A Strong Start

Last week, the team mapped out our goals for the next few months—and it’s an ambitious plan! Even in just Week 1, Vitalis has started off strong making significant progress on both the hardware and software sides of the project.

On the hardware front, the team is making headway on chassis_v2, alongside taking battery measurements and executing calibration work. This week emphasized the importance of design inputs, tolerances, and user needs—key factors that directly shape the chassis design. Some of the design considerations we hadn’t thought about before include, ensuring the handle is easy to grab one-handed without interfering with the camera and microphone, orienting the Pi and fan vertically to promote airflow, and positioning components to minimize wiring and protect sound quality. The team is also considering gasketed seals for the microphone and LCD to prevent water ingress, optimizing camera and screen angles for ease of use, and adding a physical safeguard to the shutdown button. Together, these considerations are shaping how the device will ultimately be assembled and used.

 

Screenshot shows chassis_v2 in progress!

Meanwhile, the software sub-team is taking multitasking to the next level. They’ve already developed proof-of-concepts for the QR scanner, touchscreen UI, and encryption system. Huge credit to the software team for working efficiently in parallel while maintaining clear communication within the sub-team and with hardware.

As prototype development continues, Vitalis is also preparing for QRB 1 (Qualification Review Board). During this review, the team will present current achievements, next steps, and potential project risks to a panel. We’re excited to receive feedback, identify areas for improvement, and uncover any shortcomings before moving forward to QRB 2.

Back To Work!

The team had a very refreshing winter break and is ready to continue developing the prototype! The main action item for this week was to coordinate meeting times with everyone’s schedules and hash out goals for the semester. Alongside this, more testing was conducted on the prototype the team developed during fall to catch possible mistakes that may arise in the final product.

The team decided tasks for each subteam to complete by mid February in order to remain on time and provide ample time for testing. We’re looking forward to a great semester and to develop a strong product!

SLDR Practice and Meetings

This week a portion of our group which to the UF Simulation Lab to learn about Code Blues and how they’re run. We received a lot of valuable information and feedback from medical students who were participating in the training. We’ve continued to make progress on the software and hardware sides, mainly focusing on failure testing that we will conduct. We look forward to the SLDR Presentations after break!

SLDR Preparations and More Progress!

This was a packed week for Team Vitalis! Most of our focus was on preparing for the upcoming System Level Design Review, but that didn’t mean that work on our prototype had stopped. Software-wise, we were able to get diarization working with our prototype. We also conducted research for the material choices of our final design. Finally, we had a meeting with an external advisor, where we got a better understanding of the regulations surrounding medical devices.

Prototype Inspection Day

After an intense couple of weeks of preparation, Vitalis participated in IPPD’s Prototype Inspection Day event in the Rion Ballroom last Tuesday. Upon activating our prototype, a recording session from our edge device was able to begin collecting audio data. After recording, our prototype was able to send it to an external server (Matthew’s Laptop) for transcription synthesis upon conclusion. One finished the transcript was sent back and was able to be read from the prototype’s monitor.

Here is a picture of our edge device.

The whole team was happy to receive feedback on our prototype from faculty working in AI and BME. The input we were given gave us new considerations to be conscious about moving into our next major event, SLDR.

Here is a picture of the whole group at Prototype Inspection Day. From left to right we have Aizlyn Potter (ME), Huy Nguyen (CpE), Julia Leser (BME), Julianna Gonzalez (BME), Daniel Saurez (CS), Ezequiel Medrano (CS), Dr. Laura Cruz Castro (Vitalis coach), and Matthew Li (CS).

Moving forward, in addition to preparing for SLDR, We are all very excited to begin adding more components that will be present in our final design. we hope to deliver a new chassis, begin working on our GUI, decide on and implement an E2E encryption method, and bring our team to UF’s Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation Lab to gain a better understanding of ICU environments and code blue calls.

AI Days and Progress!

Team Vitalis had a busy week!

We first presented for UF AI Days – which occurred on Tuesday Oct 28th from 5:00-6:00 PM. In order to adequately prepare, we created a Presentation poster which required input from our liaisons as to what could be publically presented from our NDA. We also prepared speaking parts for each member for the actual presentation!

Here is a photo that we have from the event!

We’ve also been able to make progress on prototyping from a software and hardware side. We’ve been able to begin utilizing the processor in conjunction with the purchased microphones as well as testing external server API calls with AI model transcriptions!
Currently we are preparing for our Prototype Inspection Day on November 4th, and will provide update after the event with any feedback!

Exciting software developments and first draft chassis design for Prototype Inspection Day!

Very exciting developments were made this week from everyone on team Vitalis! Our software team has developed a preliminary partioning system to break up recorded data into smaller pieces for more complete recording and processing. Additionally, we have selected a preliminary model for summarization of the recorded material, which we will begin testing soon!

Additionally, our Hardware sub-team has completed a preliminary design for the prototype chassis to be presented on Prototype Inspection Day (11/04). While very barebones at the moment, we plan to make vast improvements based on the feedback we recieve from professionals, students and stakeholders who will be examining our design in depth, among those of all the other IPPD teams!

PDR Presentation at JWME Site!

The team visited JWM Engineering this Friday and met with the JWME team! During this visit, Vitalis had the opportunity to present the Code Blue Preliminary Design Review to Stephen and Roseann Belser. The team also toured the office and ate a wonderful lunch together. The team was able to see a JWME server that could potentially provide support to our project!

Now that PDR is over, Vitalis is extremely excited to start prototyping! The software team is starting to design more audio experiments and brainstorming details on how to use a server to process our various models. Additionally, the hardware team is planning to start testing the capabilities of a Raspberry pi 4 and 5 with our current models. Let’s get to work!

PDR First Presentation & Feedback

This week was Team Vitalis’s first go at a full team presentation. On Tuesday afternoon (October 7th), Team Vitalis presented their shortened PDR presentation for the first time to three other teams, multiple different coaches, and IPPD staff.

Formally, Team Vitalis provided the PDR Peer Review committee a status update on the Code Blue project on 7 October 2025. Attending faculty, staff, and invited guests included Dr. Laura Cruz Castro, Dr. Janise McNair, Dr. Christian Grant, and Arielle Barnard.

First slide for our presentation!

Overall, we received amazing feedback from all parties involved, and it mainly focused on two points:

  1. Presentation Skills
    • Our team did a wonderful job with most presentation scores being Competent or Excellent! We need to make sure to support one another as we present which includes looking at our speaker, nodding along with them, and smiling and being understanding towards the crowd. We also need to make sure we project our voices and bring plenty of energy to keep the attention of the listener and also showcase our passion for the project!
  2. Slide Composition
    • For some of our slides (specifically the House of Quality and Project Risk Table), the listeners let us know that it was harder to understand the image because of the amount of words on the screen as well as the small font. Because of this, we’ve separated those slides to make it easier on the listener to understand and read during the presentation. Here is one of the slides pictured below:
Aforementioned House of Quality slide

Expanding on Architecture!

This week was a very busy week for team Vitalis! The majority of the focus was on refining the Product Architecture and developing models for our ideas created in the concept generation phase. Ezequiel developed some very elaborate and informative flow charts of the final product that we plan to continue updating as more research is done. Alongside this, Huy developed some 3D models based on Ezequiel’s plans. Below are photos of each!