{"id":369072,"date":"2019-04-14T12:54:01","date_gmt":"2019-04-14T16:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=369072"},"modified":"2025-11-19T15:47:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T20:47:06","slug":"path-to-invention-paula-doyle-369072","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/path-to-invention-paula-doyle-369072\/","title":{"rendered":"A path to invention from fashion, to Peace Corps, to medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Women of Invention<\/a> is a Newscenter series of profiles of women at the University who hold international patents. More than half of the University’s patent applications\u00a0from 2011 to 2015 include women.<\/em><\/h4>\n

After five years in fashion design, working as a top assistant for Paris Collections, Paula Doyle decided it was time for a change.<\/p>\n

It was time to get away from the \u201cself-perpetuating importance\u201d of an industry that was too much of a world unto itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the world suddenly dissolved, would you really care what designer pants you were wearing?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n

Doyle and her boyfriend eloped. They got married in Las Vegas so they could join the Peace Corps and be stationed together, wherever they landed next.<\/p>\n

That turned out to be Papua New Guinea.<\/p>\n

It was definitely a change from New York City and Paris. But that\u2019s where Doyle found her calling.<\/p>\n

Embracing new challenges<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A native of Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Doyle attended high school in Ogdensburg, New York, then went on to the State University of New York at Albany, where she graduated with a degree in philosophy.<\/p>\n

Her willingness to embrace new challenges, to abruptly switch course along a career path that has been \u201cto the left and right, and up and down,\u201d is why Doyle is now a University of Rochester surgeon, inventor, and chief medical officer of a startup company.<\/a><\/p>\n

How, exactly, did that happen?<\/p>\n

The tribes that Doyle and her husband worked with in the remote rain forests of Papua New Guinea were often in conflict. Doyle watched as relatively simple cuts from machetes festered and became infected. People would die of wounds that could have been easily treated in a hospital emergency room here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really cared about these people,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was just unacceptable to me that they had to deal with these kinds of health situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when she decided to go to medical school. After completing her medical degree and residency at the University of Texas in Galveston, Doyle came to Rochester for a three-year fellowship in urogynecology, treating female urinary incontinence and pelvic floor dysfunction.<\/p>\n

Often, Doyle would find herself in the operating room, doing pelvic reconstructive surgery by robot.<\/p>\n

The \u201ccomplaint\u201d that sparked an invention<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Imagine sitting across the room at a monitor that controls four robotic arms inserted through small incisions in the patient.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a video game,\u201d Doyle says. \u201cYou can control the robot with your hands, and when you look at the screen the optics are really, really good \u2013 but you can\u2019t actually feel what you\u2019re operating on.<\/p>\n

During one surgery, Doyle needed to peel a bladder from the scar tissue it was sitting on. It took a long time to finally figure out where to start cutting. At a meeting of other fellows and their faculty mentors, she described how difficult the case had been, and commented, \u201cI wish I had a flashlight or something I could insert so I could see better.\u201d Ron Wood and Jay Reeder, both research professors in obstetrics and gynecology, seized upon the idea, and soon Wood, Reeder, and Doyle began \u201chashing out ideas\u201d to turn her \u201ccomplaint\u201d into a viable prototype.<\/p>\n

\"two
Paula Doyle and her colleague Jay Reeder test a GreenEgg, a device they developed with their company, Endoglow.\u00a0 Doyle now serves as the start-up\u2019s cheif medical officer. (University of Rochester photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the same time Doyle completed her fellowship and joined the University as a surgeon and assistant professor, the problem she had identified in the operating room had resulted in a patented device called the GreenEgg.<\/a> It is a small disposable device that uses a fluorescing polymer at the tip that can illuminate internal anatomy when near infrared light is also used during a surgery.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s easy to use, and it really adds value to the surgery in ways we didn\u2019t even expect,\u201d Doyle says.<\/p>\n

For example, GreenEgg provides backlighting that allows surgeons to see scarring and other pathologies deeper in the tissue than expected.<\/p>\n

With the support of her supervisors, Doyle is now working part time as an assistant professor, so she can devote more time to serving as chief medical officer of Endoglow, the startup she and Reeder co-founded.<\/a><\/p>\n

Once again, she has embraced a new challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a whole different skill set being on the business side of things,\u201d Doyle says. \u201cThere are so many things I didn\u2019t realize that go into a company\u2014FDA regulations, marketing, research and development, the infrastructure within the company, quality assurance measures. \u00a0There\u2019s just all this stuff.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

If she had known all this in advance, would she still have done it?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, absolutely,\u201d Doyle says. \u201cIt\u2019s fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s an added incentive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really do believe in women\u2019s health,\u201d Doyle says, \u201cand I think that physicians should be the ones to initiate progress, whether it\u2019s in drugs or medical devices. It shouldn\u2019t be industry coming to us and saying, \u2018here, you need this.\u2019 It should be the other way around, with doctors and nurses saying, \u2018hey, this is what we need, let\u2019s develop it.\u2019 It should be inside out, not outside in.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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