Steven Keating is a very intelligent 27-year-old young man. He holds degrees in engineering and film from Queen’s University, has two patented inventions, and is currently a doctoral candidate at the prestigious MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) where he is developing new 3D printing platforms and specially designed synthetic biologics to enhance the quality of life of people.
But his promising future was threatened last year when he underwent complicated brain surgery to remove a baseball-sized cancer called .
As a way to deal with this difficult situation, Keating took the opportunity to collect as much data as possible, storing his blood samples, collecting all the images taken of him by MRI, collecting his stool samples and even filming his 10-hour surgery. duration at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“I asked to record this surgery,” he explains, “and there were a couple of nurses in the room who were using their iPhones and recording as well, so the sound was made through personal phones.”
“Data can heal.” “Having access to data allows us to understand what is happening to you, if you can share that data, some researchers and other patients will be able to use it and understand what is happening to them,” explained Steven.
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After his operation, Steven became an advocate for informed consent and allowing patients to express their concerns. He believes that complete, standardized and digitized access to patient data is essential.
Steven adopted a position of curiosity that allowed him to understand what was happening to him and deal with it. This is how he expressed it:
“If I hadn’t seen this video I would have no idea what they did to me and I believe that patients have the right to understand what people are doing to them, especially when it comes to something very sensitive like the brain.”
Steven comes from Calgary, Canada and is invigorated by creativity and design, and loves maple syrup. He currently writes articles and presents lectures to various research groups, mechanical engineering and medicine. His research projects cover a diverse range of 3D printing, large-scale construction, synthetic biology studies, and novel manufacturing methods to explore his own brain tumor data.
Fountain: