Health Occupation Students of America (HOSA) competed in their Spring Leadership Conference at Allen High School on Friday and Saturday. There were 15 top 5 finishes as well as 11 members advancing to the State Leadership Conference.

“So my event was a team event and it’s called medical innovation,” senior Vishnu Vasudev said. “My partner and I had to invent a medical device and presented it at the leadership conference. So our device is a non-invasive kidney disease monitor and it basically extracts certain chemicals from the body and analyzes them to track your kidney.”

Senior Ayaan Mohammed, who advanced in Biomedical Debate, was surprised with his first place finish.

“It feels surreal. Especially with this being the first SLC I attended, I was really proud of our team being able to accomplish such a big feat with minimal experience,” Mohammed said. “I think the first round of the debate was shaky since I was really nervous and the other team seemed really prepared, but after we won that round it was a huge confidence boost and we were able to keep that energy until the end.”

Seeing other people’s research and presentations offered a great learning opportunity for Vasudev and junior Sophie Yang.

“Well it’s really taught me to just like broaden my perspective of the healthcare field,” Yang said. “There were a lot of very creative ideas and they all had very creative solutions to some of the really serious concerns that we have right now.”

“Making the device of course was an amazing experience where we got to learn a bunch of new stuff, and competing was really fun because we got to see other people’s research and other people’s projects and it’s always just fun to present,” Vasudev said.

Also advancing to state, Yang is looking forward to meeting people with similar passions and goals.

“I’m really looking forward to meeting a lot of new people,” Yang said. “Seeing what they’re passionate about within the medical field and what they hope to do in the future, and like what their goals are.”

Mohammed hopes to have a little bit more preparation before state.

“Even though this did help immensely in quickly coming up with arguments during the debate, I think for state we’re going to spend more time in finding evidence and gathering research to back-up our arguments,” he said.