Published in the Independence Daily Reporter September 20, 2017
Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas
I recently received an inquiry from a community college business coach in Oregon saying the college was working with their city to create an “innovation hub and maker space.” He said “As part of the process, we are planning to complete a feasibility analysis to provide some guidance in terms of a community needs assessment and overall planning for the project.”
He went on to ask if we had any resources he could use in these early efforts. I chuckled as I thought about the responses had we done a community needs assessment in 2012 about the need for a Fab Lab in our region. Almost no one around us had heard about Fab Labs and maker spaces. We stumbled onto the information and then found out about Fab Lab Tulsa (BTW, happy birthday to Fab Lab Tulsa; they just turned six years old.) I ended up telling the guy from Oregon that since we didn’t do any of the kind of assessment and planning he referenced in his email, that we really didn’t have any resources to help him at this part of his journey.
A small circle of us began learning about Fab Labs and maker spaces, along with 3D printing and some of the other related digital technologies. In October, 2014 Fab Lab ICC opened after just two and one-half years of this learning and informal study. Each week we are learning and affirming more about the positive psychological effects of creative work in the Fab Lab.
Today, it’s time for us to learn about another technology that although not exactly new promises to have similar effects on the physiological aspects of people’s lives. The technology, hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) has been used for a long time, starting with treatment in dive medicine for what is commonly referred to as the “bends” when divers ascend too quickly.
Although intimidating for me to write about a medical topic, the entrepreneur in me sees the potential for improving people’s lives so it’s time for us to learn about HBOT. Right now, my sole source of knowledge about HBOT is a book by a doctor who has been using HBOT for about 40 years in treating all kinds of diseases and injuries. “The Oxygen Revolution, Third Edition” by Paul G. Harch, MD and Virginia McCullough is written in a way laypeople can understand and see why HBOT is so versatile.
Many diseases and injuries have to do with low levels of blood and oxygen flow to the affected areas. The lack of blood flow and low oxygen levels cause much of the damage. The principle behind HBOT is to breathe pure oxygen while in an environment of higher than normal pressure. This combination of pressure and pure oxygen causes cells, DNA and genes to act in accelerated ways to rebuild and repair damaged cells.
For the last decade or two, HBOT has been used successfully in our area to treat wounds that are stubborn to heal. In a diabetic person, a foot wound that doesn’t heal can lead to amputation and all the related trauma, expense and debilitation that follows. Because of the essential nature of the way HBOT works at the cellular and gene level, we should be using it for other diseases. Dr. Harch, in his 40 years of treatment has seen life changing effects for individuals and families after treatments for conditions such as cerebral palsy, carbon monoxide poisoning, brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and stroke. This list is long and can be seen at Dr. Harch’s web site www.HBOT.com.
In our manner of innovation; that is, combining things to come up with something new, we have an idea and assumption we want to evaluate. Although with a limited number of individuals, we’ve seen the psychological value of veterans with PTSD working in the Fab Lab creative environment. What if we combined that with the physiological benefits of HBOT? We’d like to either work with one of the local hospitals having a hyperbaric chamber or obtain funding to build a physician assisted HBOT clinic to find out.
HBOT is not a cure-all for everything, but it’s time we explored the potential for treating more disease and injury than just wound healing.
Jim Correll is the director at Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community
Jim Correll 