CLARKS SUMMIT — At just 17 years old, Manan Pancholy knows the career path he wants.
Like both of his parents before him, he wants to become a doctor.
And with his first patent, a cardiac catheterization patent, going public already this month, he’s well on his way to not only achieving that goal, but revolutionizing patient care in the process. It is no exaggeration.
Abington Heights High School seniors “track and conduct biomedical research” in their free time with Dr. Nishant Sethi at the Scranton Regional Hospital.
“I have been deeply involved in research through Dr. Sethi and Regional and through the Sigma Xi Research Honor Society,” said Pancholy.
One of these shadowing days, Pancholy was observing Sethi in the operating room. Sethi used a catheter to open a patient’s blood vessel for diagnostic purposes. As Pancholy explained, catheters are used for a variety of procedures, diagnostics, and/or interventions and are generally “pretty straight in nature.”
“So trying to insert this guidewire of this catheter into a vessel that often has a lot of twists and turns … so I realized I had more difficulty.”
Pancholy realized that by applying his knowledge of physics he learned in school and changing the construction of the catheter and how it was inserted into the blood vessel, the process would be much easier.
Giving the very example that spurred his ideas, he says: But if you make a ladder into a spiral, or like a carpet, then if you make the carpet into a spiral, you’ll be able to go down the stairs. “
So Pancholy has redesigned the catheter with angles and kinks like zigzags and waves. This allowed doctors to more easily adjust and navigate the kinks and bends within blood cells, making the catheterization procedure much easier for both the doctor and the patient.
When it came time to patent the new idea of the corkscrew coronary catheter, Pancholy knew it would be a process. But he also mentioned that his father, Dr. Samir Pancholy, has his own 23 patents.
“I presented my idea to this patent attorney, and he liked the idea and helped me through the process of working with USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) examiners. We’ve been very lucky.
Pancholy was already an innovator before his 18th birthday or high school graduation, and wants to channel that tendency into a professional career.
“I aspire to a career in medicine as a doctor, but I want to do more than just help patients at their bedside. I also want to innovate and create medical devices that aid in that process.
His personal motto is: Leading medical teams to serve directly, feeling patients, constantly teaching and learning through this research process, educating people about my device and implementing it in patient care so they can Better. “
Pancholy, who has a great interest in biostatistics as well as medicine, plans to explore both in greater depth at college. We have already applied to several universities, including , George Washington University, and Pennsylvania State University, all of which offer DSMB programs that allow accepted high school students to enter medical school directly. He has also applied to more traditional premedical education programs such as Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania.
He gave great thanks to regional doctors such as Sethi and Dr. Deepika Carissetti and, of course, to his parents, the aforementioned Dr. Samir Pancholy and his mother, Dr. Dipti Pancholy.
