Joe Bogusky | Surgical Robots, Catheter R&D, & Seahorse Tails

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
catheters, engineers, materials, physician, developing, devices, patient, industry, robot, davinci, share, ptfe, surgical robots, intuitive surgical, test, question, learn, people, design, analogy
SPEAKERS
Presenter, Aaron Moncur, Joe Bogusky

Presenter 00:00
Hi everyone. We’ve set up this being an engineer podcast as an industry knowledge repository, if you will, we hope it’ll be a tool where engineers can learn about and connect with other companies, technologies, people, resources and opportunities. So make some connections and enjoy the show.

Joe Bogusky 00:18
It was an incredible experience, both both from an educational standpoint, but also personally right I got to see changes happen in my brother that I was partially responsible for.

Aaron Moncur 00:44
Hello, and welcome to the being an engineer podcast. Our guest today is Joe Bogusky, who is a Senior Mechanical Engineer at Intuitive Surgical, and has been working in the medical device engineering field for 25 years. Joe’s focus is developing innovative and minimally invasive medical devices. And he has been involved with every stage of the process from identifying the clinical need through manufacturing. Most recently, Joe’s experience has been focused on engineering surgical robots, which we’ll dive into in greater detail during the interview. Joe, thanks so much for being with me today.

Joe Bogusky 01:18
That’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Aaron Moncur 01:20
Okay, so what was it when you were a young lad that made you think to yourself, I want to become an engineer?

Joe Bogusky 01:30
Well, you know, I’m probably like many people, I’ve had a similar story, and just like taking things apart and put trying to put into them come back together, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. But I’ve been personally motivated, I have a younger brother, who was born with cerebral palsy and autistic. And you know, I didn’t feel as though that I had the capability to help him out at a neurological level, I think humans are still struggling with the ability to help autistic individuals at a neurological level, but thought that I could help them mechanically get around, and mobility. So I was really driven by what can I do to help individuals have a higher quality of life and the case my brother tried to give them a better, you know, more independence to get around on his own without what we’re seeking help?

Aaron Moncur 02:18
That’s amazing. Would you be comfortable sharing any of the contraptions or tools or devices that you came up with to help your brother?

Joe Bogusky 02:26
Sure. So my father was a auto mechanic at the time. So although not college educated, he was incredibly clever with coming up with devices and instruments, and we went to an institution that advocated therapy, and unfortunately, a lot of is therapeutically equipment was expensive. So mostly, my dad, I’d love to take more credit than I deserve. But it was mostly my dad, I’d certainly would help out where possible, but we would come up with less expensive or DIY versions of those therapeutic instruments, to to help with whatever he needed at the time, whether it was some mobility devices, or some even some vestibular or respiratory devices to kind of get him in a regiment of good balance, good breathing good oxygen to the brain, or what have you.

Aaron Moncur 03:22
I hope this doesn’t come across as flippant at all. But what what an amazing I don’t know, phase to go through as as a young man in preparation for becoming an engineer. I mean, you can’t get better experience than that, and motivation to make something. Yeah,

Joe Bogusky 03:40
absolutely. I really, I really appreciate you taking the time to say that. I mean, it, you know, my life was different. But it was an incredible experience, both both from an educational standpoint, but also personally right, I got to see changes happen in my brother that I was partially responsible for.

Aaron Moncur 03:59
Yeah, that’s amazing. Thank you for for sharing that. Well, you you mentioned on your LinkedIn profile that you have been involved in nearly every stage of the product lifecycle, including concept prototype, laboratory and clinical evaluation, iteration and improvement manufacturing, marketing, packaging, sterilization, do you have a favorite stage of the product development cycle? And and if so, why?

Joe Bogusky 04:29
From a product development cycle, it’s, it’s gotta be the prototyping development stage, coming up with these crazy ideas, and then going to go into the lab to try and actually put it together. It really feels like you’re in the sandbox, which is, which is great. Unfortunately, you can’t spend too much time or money while you’re there. So you have to be efficient with what you do. But yeah, the the idea to the opportunity to pull in all of these little things that you’ve picked up along the way or things that you’ve observed then try and implement it into what you’re trying to do with one particular project. Oh, yeah, no, that’s, that’s, that’s really the most fun part of the design phase for me.

Aaron Moncur 05:10
Yeah, the early stage? Oh,

Joe Bogusky 05:13
yeah, for sure. Although I gotta say, you know, I, I actually enjoy the opportunity to witness some idea that I was so confident about, it was definitely going to work and see it fail. But more more precisely seeing how it would fail. So I could at least learn something right. You know, nobody likes to be wrong. However, if you’re wrong with the opportunity to learn something, that’s, that’s really worthwhile.

Aaron Moncur 05:40
Absolutely. Absolutely. Can you I’m putting you on the spot a little bit here. But can you think of a particular situation where you prototype something, and it did not turn out the way you expected it to? And maybe what did you learn from that?

Joe Bogusky 05:56
Yeah, sure. So the let me think about, let me think about that for one second. I would have to say that early on in my career, I was just learning a little bit more about materials. And we were, I make I made catheters for for a significant portion of my career. And those catheters typically have a PTFE liner, that’s poly tetrafluoroethylene, or Teflon. And it’s a lubricious, which means it’s slick material. And it’s decently robust. But the device that I was working on, we were making it in such a way that it was subjected to a great deal of stresses. And the thought was, well, let’s just make the PTFE thicker, and have that would be more resilient. And it turns out because of the way PTFE is manufactured, making it thicker, did not increase its durability. We had to go to a different method of manufacture for the PTFE so that I could handle the the abuse that I was going to go but yeah, that was a that was a learning experience. Were like, oh, yeah, no, it’s falling apart. Let’s just make it thicker. And that should be fine. And that was not the way to go.

Aaron Moncur 07:14
Oh, that’s a terrific lessons learned. Thanks for sharing that one. Well, you let’s see, you also mentioned having become adept at developing disruptive technologies in the highly regulated industry of medical devices. Ken, can you speak about one or two of these technologies that you have helped develop?

Joe Bogusky 07:34
Yeah, sure. And I’d be I’d be happy to have, you know, throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity and the privilege to get a couple of patents underneath my name coming from originating from developing ideas that are that are unique to my industry. But in the worlds of disruptive technologies for what I do, a good portion of my early career was in developing Catherine standard, conventional catheters, these are basically small, flexible tubes that go into the to the body through the pathways that are already there, whether they be a vascular pathway, they’ll go onto a blood vessel, or maybe they’ll go into an airway or some other pipes that’s in the body, right. But over the years, we’re developing more and more robotic control over those. So no longer Are these just this flexible dummying straws that physician might manipulate by hand on on the back end. But now they have to be robotically controlled. And to do that requires mechanisms built into the catheter that can interface with robotic controls. servo motors, then, of course, gets translated into human interface and controls so that the physician can can drive to where they need to go. And all of this did not exist, not in the vascular space 1012 years ago.

Aaron Moncur 09:02
Well, speaking of catheters, can you talk a little bit about what are some of the development strategies that are unique to catheters, as opposed to like laparoscopic devices or surgical instruments, because they’re very specific shapes and materials that are commonly used in catheters that aren’t necessarily used and other kinds of medical device development?

Joe Bogusky 09:26
That’s very true. And one of the things that I find enjoyable to talk about is the complexity required for catheters. So we’re always up against conflicting design requirements, as I’m sure every industry is, you know, physicians want the inside of the catheter to be as big as possible so that they can fit their instruments through it, but they also want the outside to be as small as possible so that they can navigate deep into the anatomy. So I’m still trying to working on making the ID bigger than the OD. But another aspect is the To the proximal end of the catheter, that’s the that’s the end that the physician is holds or the end that goes attaches to the robot, it needs to be relatively stiff so that you can push on the distal end or the far end, the end that is first inserted into a patient, it needs to be super floppy. So you don’t do any harm when you’re trying to navigate these blood vessels or airways are not natural, natural pathways in the body. So having a single tube that goes from Super floppy to super stiff is, is a very interesting design challenge. And that is one thing that differentiates it from the rigid robotics. The other thing, though, is rigid robotics are decently rigid, that’s, you know, the DaVinci Robot, it does laparoscopy procedures, it makes a couple of little holes in your in your abdomen, and you have these basically rigid arms with end effectors that are very repeatable and controllable. And they’re they get used several, many, many times the catheters however, they’re made out of materials that are very susceptible to the environment that they’re in. So when you’re designing a catheter, you might be using polymers that get quite a bit softer when they’re in a moist warm environment than they would on the bench. So you have to make sure that whatever you’re designing for, you have your, your specification sheets for how the prop and the materials should behave on the bench. But you also have to consider that when it’s in a patient, it’s going to perform differently. So you got to make sure your tests are geared towards actual clinical relevance.

Aaron Moncur 11:36
And how do you do that you have a special test fixture or some kind of Phantom, I don’t know human temperature body temperature bath that you place the catheters in,

Joe Bogusky 11:47
we surely do ya cvwd is relatively new in the kitchen. But in the industry, the water heaters have been around for quite a long time. So you’ll have water baths, right and your test fixtures will be submerged in the water baths that are brought up to temperature. 35 see body temperature so that you can observe how the device actually performs in a wet, warm environment.

Aaron Moncur 12:10
It’s funny that you bring up su VT, we’ve used those as well. I mean, you can you know, go and spend 1000s of dollars on some custom engineered solution to heat the water or the fluid solution up to temperature or you go out and buy $150 To feed heater and stick that in there. And it works great.

Joe Bogusky 12:27
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right.

Aaron Moncur 12:31
Well, for for engineers listening to this who are focused on developing new catheters, what what’s one skill or tool that you can recommend, the more specific the better to help those engineers succeed at developing new catheters?

Joe Bogusky 12:47
I’ve got two answers for that. So I’ve got a I’ve got a very generic answer that I would I would recommend to every engineer out there, you really need to develop your own tools and your own references so that you can go back to it. So throughout the course of my career through through every project, I’m always calculating, in my particular industry, I’m always calculating the area of the cross sectional area of a catheter, or, or what happens if I take a tube that starts out at one size, and I melt it down to a smaller annular shape, or maybe it’s a smaller geometry all together, I’m gonna make that calculation again, and again, and again. So I’ve got an Excel spreadsheet where I continually add equations that I go back to all the time. So having having your own references, and your own tools that you know very well, I think is vitally important for any engineer. And I would also highly recommend developing, you don’t have to learn programming per se. But I really encourage engineers to learn a little bit about writing scripts, or macros in Excel, or maybe a Python script, so that they can get rid of all of these rigorous, tedious, repetitive calculations that we have to do or tests that we have to do or whatever it may be. But anything that you can automate, automated, automate, it’ll make your life a whole lot easier. And you can, you can try a whole lot of different things faster, for sure. For catheter, specifically, man, and I know that I think about it probably talks to any engineering discipline, you really got to know your materials. Like you would be surprised at how frequently with new materials hit the market, and they’re not always super advertised. Sometimes you have to seek them out. But learning about how the materials perform, like going back to my PTFE example, right, I had to learn how PTFE was manufactured to see how it affected the final product. So learning how the materials behave, how they react, how they’re formed. Just know your materials I’m always keep eyes out for new materials.

Aaron Moncur 14:55
Who are some of the the material manufacturers Truus out there the suppliers that are commonly used in catheter manufacturing or development. I remember Zeus was a player back in the day, I haven’t done much in catheters for quite a while, they may or may not be still be there. But if I’m a an engineer just getting started in catheters, and I’m looking for a supplier that I can just order some sample tubing from, where would I go to look?

Joe Bogusky 15:24
Yeah, now the I tell you what the industry has significantly changed over the last probably 15 years. Zeus is certainly still out there. They are. One of the major players and PTFE and fluoropolymers. In general. There’s other companies out there that there’s a junk OSHA is a company based in Japan, they have a United States presence, that are very capable in their floor polymers as well. Yet, a lot of companies are developing these quick turn prototype things. So for example, it’s no secret catheters have braid reinforcement. Frequently, they’ll either have a coil or they’ll have a braid reinforcement. fortwayne Olbrich, they have these rapid accelerator programs where you can, you know, get a relatively small quantity of standard size. And by quickly and try it. Same thing is true for extrusion houses, there’s many different extrusion houses out there, that offer I know, it’s not t connectivities t what they were bought by Norton, they have a website where you can just go in and pick out different extrusions that you may like, Spectrum plastics has a shop stocking program. For parts, I know Tegra and has manuals that are readily ordered and hypo tubes that are you can order to build product with right off their dock, three or four days, you’ll have some raw materials, that might not be exactly what you think your design needs, but it’ll get you in the ballpark.

Aaron Moncur 16:58
That’s great. That’s great. I have two comments that are in reference to some things you had said earlier. And they I just thought about them. And I thought you know, people might might find these interesting or useful. So the first one, you were talking about how the the PTFE wall thickness and you want it to make it more durable. So you made a thicker? Well, that didn’t actually make it more durable. I had an experience, completely different material. But we a lesson learned that I had during an r&d phase, we had this part that was concave in shape, and we needed to complete it. And so we sent it off to the Chrome plate and it came back. And I guess technically it was plated, but it didn’t have that nice shiny chrome finish on it. On the on the inside the concave part on the outside, it looked beautiful. Unfortunately, it was the inside that we really cared about. And so we wrote back to them. And we’re like, Hey, what’s going on here, the inside looks terrible, the outside looks great, but we don’t care about the outside. And they told us I can’t remember the reason now. But the for Chrome planning, if you have a kind of a concave shape, the concave surface, the inside surface isn’t going to get as shiny unless they use some special process that they do have. But you have to especially request it. So that was something I never knew. And we got bid, because we didn’t know about it. But now I know if we want to complete a concave shape, you have to request that that particular method of doing so to get the concave surface nice and shiny. And then the other one was you mentioned Excel spreadsheets. And I have I’ve done the exact same thing that you have over the years. I’ve built my own spreadsheet, mostly with with mechanical equations like beam deflection and buckling and different cross sectional shapes and things like that. And I mean, it’s been tremendously useful. I’ve used it for 15 years now. Right? And I keep adding to it. But yeah, the number of times I’ve pulled that out over the years is if I had a nickel for every time, you know, one of those things. So anyway, a bit of a departure, but I wanted to share those two things as well. All right, back back to Joe. So your recent experience in the industry, like Like you’ve mentioned, has been in developing surgical robots. In fact, you currently work at Intuitive Surgical, the creator of the prestigious DaVinci Robot. Can you speak a little about surgical robots? I mean, what what benefits have they brought to medical device? Or medical procedures? And and what are some of the limitations still?

Joe Bogusky 19:23
Oh, yeah, no, that’s a that’s a good question. As far as the benefits they had brought is the ability to give a physician extra fine control. So let me let me clarify something really quickly. So it is in fact the Vinci robot. Everybody calls it the DaVinci Robot but it’s not actually a robot in a conventional manner. We don’t we don’t tell it. Hey, you know, go pull out that dude’s appendix. It’s, it’s always a physician driving it right. So a physician is always in control. and it’s well, the the the inputs from the physician are interpreted by the robot and then actuated on the patient. So, it is in fact robotic controlled. But the but the robots not doing that much by itself without a direct or physician interference. With that being said, the advantages are in, the best example I can think of is your mouse sensitivity. So on many people’s computers, they’ll have mouse sensitivities adjusted to a certain amount where they’ll move the mouse an inch, and then on the screen, it’ll move all the way across the screen. While we’re doing the one of the one of the capabilities of the DaVinci Robot is you can do exactly the opposite, wherein a physician can move 12 inches in real space with his hands as input his or her hands as input. But inside of a patient, the distal end of the end effector might move only a millimeter. So if you have that kind of precision, that kind of control, you can be pretty precise about every little nook or cranny, cut stitch everything you’re doing every staple that you place, it can be very precisely controlled. So and getting it right the first time, I think is going to be a big step. And I think legislation is going more and more that direction wherein the the hospitals and the physicians are responsible for doing it right the first time where the patients pay for the first time. However, if that patient has to come back and see that exact same procedure again, the hospital may be lying liable for the cost of them.

Aaron Moncur 21:38
Interesting, huh? What are the controls look like for the DaVinci? Is it little knobs and buttons that you turn and push? Or is it like some kind of joystick that you’re moving around? Or what do they look like?

Joe Bogusky 21:53
Yeah, for the for the, for the Da Vinci robot, they are in fact, joysticks but not not in a conventional manner. They’re three dimensional joysticks that are. They’re like, they’re like little pinchers that you can operate in space. And they’re on these little non-interfering boom arms where a physician can move his or her arms and grab and pinch things with their own fingers, as if their fingers were the forceps inside of a patient, or as if their fingers was pushing a sutures. Through some intestines, right. So it that I’m proud to be part of the company, but I’ve only been with them for for five years. But the name Intuitive Surgical is extremely appropriate, because it allows the physician to just try and do the things with his or her own hands, as if it was their own hands. Right? It’s very intuitive.

Aaron Moncur 22:54
Well, that’s very cool. I would love to try that. So it’s almost an extension of the surgeon’s hands is what you’re saying?

Joe Bogusky 22:59
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Aaron Moncur 23:02
Okay, well, what do you think that there’s a future where surgical robots are 100%? Autonomous? Or? Or do you think there’s always going to be, you know, some human interaction?

Joe Bogusky 23:14
You know, it’s interesting, I work with data scientists and programmers and roboticist have a very high caliber. And almost everyone will tell you that the AI is exceptionally equipped to handle things of a very predictable nature. However, all every one of those engineers would tell you, they would still want a pilot flying the plane, if it ever needed it. However, there are definitely some lower risk things that could be completely handed off to automation, to allow the robot to do itself. You know, a great example, is the self driving cars. Right? There’s there’s potentially some controversy there about how effective they are and whether or not we should implement that technology. But I don’t think anyone’s complaining about parking one of those cars. So parking is a relatively low risk feature, right? If retracting an instrument from a patient is a relatively low risk process in the whole surgical procedure. So maybe those aspects absolutely would be a physician pushes a button and and the device does what it needs to do.

Aaron Moncur 24:29
Got it? Got it. Okay, that’s a good analogy. How about this what advances in surgical robotics should we expect to see in the next you know, four or five, seven years and and what skills do engineers need to have specifically to develop these advances?

Joe Bogusky 24:46
I definitely do believe AI is going to become more and more on center stage and with the robots having greater and greater process of processing power to analyze a certain situation, whether it’s being precisely cut taking a circular retina around a patient’s eye during eye surgery, or they are precisely placing sutures in a captured intestine, for example, I’m sorry, that’s a big graphic. But these are things where the physician can line up for and then push a button to finish the job right to get to go make it happen. As far as skills that engineers need to develop to develop those advances. I gotta go back to materials, because the devices that I make today use very, in many cases, they use different materials and what I had done when I first started making catheters, because the catheters, the materials that I deal with today, they weren’t available, and they offer so many advantageous properties and features that materials in the day did not have. So yeah, you always got to keep an eye on on new materials.

Aaron Moncur 26:04
Yeah, well, I’m looking at you, the listeners won’t be able to see the video here. But I’m seeing you’re right now, you’re not that old and already in your career, things have changed quite a bit is what you’re telling me. So that’s, that’s that’s absolutely. All right. Well, I’ll take a very short break here and share that team. pipeline.us is where you can learn more about how we help medical device and other product engineering or manufacturing teams, develop turnkey equipment, custom fixtures and automated machines to characterize, inspect, assemble, manufacture and perform verification testing on your devices. We’re speaking with Joe Bogusky today. What are a few traits, Joe, that you have seen in the most successful engineers, and in the most successful engineering teams?

Joe Bogusky 26:55
I think it’s really important to read outside of your industry. I personally, I’m looking at parametric design, which is predominantly some some methodologies that are used in architecture. We’re learning a lot of stuff there that I’m looking to employ and future designs. So yeah, I think individuals when they want to be successful, they read a lot of diverse information. As far as, as far as teams, I think the teams work best when there’s, there’s a enough experience on the team and us enough diverse experience on the team where they can all work together. You know, I work great when I have someone who’s very knowledgeable in different materials, and someone who’s very knowledgeable, different manufacturing processes. But I also really enjoy working with individuals that have done things in different ways than I have done. And if if you can’t find one of those people just find somebody new. Right? If you get somebody new, who’s at least somewhat verbally curious, and ask questions, they always spark new conversations or trying, they’ll force people to see things in a way that it might not have looked at or might not have considered because they’re coming out with completely new eyes. And of course, that new individual has has a benefit of hopefully learning something from more senior peers.

Aaron Moncur 28:25
Right? Absolutely. Going back to your comment about reading books, I also love to read books, they’re I think they’re one of the best and and cheapest sources of new ideas. When you read a book is typically something specific that you have sought out i the root of my question is, where do you go to find your new ideas? Do you start with a very specific question and find a book that answers that question? Or do they kind of happen organically? And if the latter, what are these organic sources that are leading you to these books?

Joe Bogusky 29:02
Yeah, no, that’s a, that’s a great question of. So when I say, when I advocate reading a lot, it’s actually not so much books that I’m advocating. I have the convenience that I live very near a university library. And so there’s a lot of university papers that are there. And what I found is that if with a couple of clever keywords, you’ll find things that are very similar, but also a little bit different than what you’re working on. So when I’m working on catheters is a great example of this is while trying to figure out how to increase the torsional stiffness of a catheter. And what that means is that when a physician or a robot is trying to twist the back end of a catheter, the far end of the catheter that’s inside the patient will actually twist when the patient twists. So you look up things like torsion and torque and tubular designs and braid reinforced, binds designs or what have you. And there’s a lot of papers there, no doubt for sure. But one of the papers that captivated me and took me off into a wild tangent was, why are seahorse tails square most, most animals that have little grabby things, you know, you think of snake and you when you think catheters, it’s very easy to think of worms and snakes and you know, octopus, and you know, these, the elephant’s trunk, you know, they’re mostly round, but see horse’s tail is square and have an advantage, square, skeletal structure. And just reading about why that is, or what we’ve learned about that just kind of opens up some brand new ideas just out of, you know, that are crazy. So biomimicry is a great source of inspiration. And it’s, it’s generally in places you don’t expect.

Aaron Moncur 30:55
That is fascinating. See horse tails being square. Yeah. And going to a university to access those white papers. Really great advice there. What What are a few ways that you have seen individual contributors and engineering teams unknowingly sabotage their own success?

Joe Bogusky 31:19
Yeah, it’s losing sight of the bigger picture. So in my industry, it’s a heavily regulated industry. And, you know, if, if, if we make mistakes, you know, it could have very, very significant impacts. You know, hopefully, they’re just financial, it’s, you know, market launch dates get pushed back, or, or something benign like that. But it could be even more significant than that. So testing things is very important, for sure. But I think if you get too focused on one particular aspect of your tests, you can you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out the perfect test, that isn’t necessarily going to give you the time where you can explore different ideas where maybe even that test isn’t isn’t that is isn’t necessary, right? It says, if you’re trying to test how robust something is, for example, and then you spend a whole lot of time developing a test that tortures your device. That is time that is valuable. But if you spend too much time on that you might have missed this indestructible material that was over here that would make that test, mostly moot. So getting too focused on any one particular detail, I think is a good way to bring productivity to a halt

Aaron Moncur 32:38
is tough for engineers, I think because we love going down rabbit holes, right? We love understanding exactly why the the seahorses tail is square and yeah, it’d be easy to spend too much time there. Yeah. Well, alright, my next question here, this is the debut of this question. So I’m trying it out on you a little bit of a guinea pig here. What what is the most scared that you’ve ever been? And how did you handle the situation? And what did you learn from it?

Joe Bogusky 33:09
Professionally,

Aaron Moncur 33:10
you can choose whatever you feel like yeah, whatever you want to share,

Joe Bogusky 33:15
personally. Yeah, by far, I was watching my brother’s kid. And we were out playing in a park somewhere and we play hide and seek and you know, he’s really bad, right? Kids are really bad. I can see see where this is going. I took my eyes off him for a minute. And sure enough, I did misplace him for a minute and that was terrifying. Terrifying.

Aaron Moncur 33:48
I can only imagine.

Joe Bogusky 33:51
I mean, I did what whatever whatever uncle I guess would would probably do right and you know, of course the I have the biological reactions. The terror and the fear. I feel the heart you know, the my heart beating out of my chest. But yeah, do what you would normally do just start calling for him and screaming for looking around like crazy man.

Aaron Moncur 34:14
And eventually, he popped his head out of some bush and

Joe Bogusky 34:18
yes, yeah, of course. They could as

Aaron Moncur 34:23
well, I I’ll share mine can ask the question and then not share mine. So what my this is also a personal experience that this is my our second son. And when he was not quite a year old, we were out eating at a restaurant. And it was totally it has nothing to do with engineering but that’s okay. It’s interesting anyway. out to eat and all of a sudden he started having a seizure. And and you know, this had never happened before. So we were like, oh, no, what’s you know what’s happening? And and then he started going blue, you know, like he wasn’t getting out. Oxygen, and I was totally useless, right? I think I called 911. And that’s about all I could do. I was I was completely useless otherwise, luckily grandpa was there. And he had the, the sense to stick his finger into our son’s mouth and dig out, something had lodged in his throat, and he was choking on it. paramedics got there, and he had started to come back around, but he was still pretty lethargic. Anyway, what happened was, he had what’s called a febrile seizure, which apparently is not super uncommon for younger kids. And it’s, it’s kind of like the body’s way of restarting the computer, right when it happens when there’s a sudden spike in in core temperature. Apparently, he had pneumonia, we didn’t know that. And that triggered this spike in temperature, which triggered the seizure. And unfortunately, he was eating something when that happens. So then he started choking on some chips, or whatever you’re saying. Anyway, like you said, right, the heart starts beating fast. That was That was terrifying. But luckily, he was totally fine. And, and oh, and then Alright, super quick, short, tangent straight after that. So they told us the doctors, kids who have had febrile seizures, they might have another one, or the risk for having one is greater, even though they’re usually totally harmless. Just keep an eye out for it. So my wife and I were pretty, you know, aware that this could happen. And we’re keeping our eyes out. And I was working from home about a week later. And I hear my wife screaming, and I’m thinking to myself, Oh, no, it’s happening again, right? Are kids having another seizure? So I rushed out of my office into the living room, and I’m saying, you know, what’s, what’s going on? Is he okay, what’s what’s happening? And she says, there’s a bird in the house, there’s a bird. I’m thinking, Are you kidding me? That’s what you’re feeling about a bird? Oh, anyway. All right. All right. Well, we’re getting towards the end here. Just a couple more questions, and we’ll wrap it up. What is the best compliment that someone at work ever gave you? As weird as it may

Joe Bogusky 37:05
sound? I think it was a compliment regarding my use of analogies. So trying to communicate a relatively complex concept to somebody who wasn’t an engineer. And, you know, pulling from my knowledge of the real world and what most, you know, normal people might have experienced with pulling analogies to try and explain what was going on in the system, using an analogy that this the this particular individual could could relate to. So yeah,

Aaron Moncur 37:39
yeah. That’s that’s huge, right? Being able to speak and communicate in a way that someone understands. Our engineering manager likes to say that the meaning of communication is the how does he say that the answer that you get back, basically trying to say, if if the person you’re speaking with doesn’t, doesn’t understand what it is, you’re saying, then you’re not communicating? So using analogies? I think that’s a great way. And I’ve already seen your skill at that with the the mouse analogy. All right, well, if you could write one thing on a billboard that every engineer in the world was going to see, what would your message be?

Joe Bogusky 38:18
I would say, not only for engineering, but in life in general. Just don’t hold too firmly to things that you think, you know, the world is always changing our comprehension of things is always expanding. And things that were true at one point are we believe to be true? At one point, it might not be exactly true today. And so, yeah, just just keep, you know, keep your eye out for getting too locked into the things that you think you know, because it might not be true anymore.

Aaron Moncur 38:56
I love that you share that. I call this the absolute certainty principle. And I have talked with my team about being aware of the absolute certainty principle in the past. In fact, there’s a quote on my wall here by Mark Twain. It says, It ain’t what you don’t know. That gets you into trouble. It’s what you know, for sure. That just ain’t so. Nice. Very, very wise. Yeah. All right. Well, what what’s the best part of your job job?

Joe Bogusky 39:28
Oh, yeah, that’s, that’s, you know what? That’s, that’s kind of tricky for me. I’m very lucky wherein I really liked my job. I really like having these crazy ideas and going to lab and trying to see if I can actually make them that’s the maker. Part of me is coming out in the lab for sure. I really enjoy trying to teach other engineers things that I have experienced or things that I think I know, right. So I like guy I like sharing that sort of knowledge and of course In my particular industry, seeing the effects that my products have on people, man, not assume that’s, that’s, I’m really lucky to be where I’m at. I really, really am.

Aaron Moncur 40:11
Yeah, that’s incredible. How can people get a hold of you? Maybe they, I don’t know, they’re looking for some mentorship, or they just, they have some questions for you. What? What’s a good way for people to find you? Sure,

Joe Bogusky 40:24
probably the best way B, you can find me on LinkedIn. There’s not too many biggest keys in the world. So I don’t think you’ll find too many on there. And certainly not that many in the, in the medical device industry. So yeah, yeah. Search for me there.

Aaron Moncur 40:40
Perfect. Wonderful. Well, Joe, this has been just delightful. Thank you so much for sharing some of your time and your wisdom and insight that you’ve gained through hard experience over over what was it 2025 years in the industry? Thank you very much.

Joe Bogusky 40:54
Yeah, yeah, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me and giving me the opportunity to potentially reach new new and future engineers.

Aaron Moncur 41:00
I’m Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design, and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode. To learn how your team can leverage our team’s expertise developing turnkey equipment, custom fixtures and automated machines and with product design, visit us at Team pipeline.us. Thanks for listening