This week has been very exciting. Jacinta and I have spent a lot of time in different wards, getting to know the nurses and gathering feedback on some of the technology we brought with us. The surveys have allowed me to see a lot more of the hospital, and investigate its most profound technological needs. Even with extensive research and good communication, there is often a gap between what we back in the states think is appropriate or useful and what is actually practical in the recipient site. After being a witness to events like that with the Fahrenheit thermometers I talked about in a previous post, I can really appreciate the importance of doing surveys early on in the design process so that the projects students at Rice work on remain true to what is needed in Malawi.

Today and yesterday we brought four new technologies to the wards besides the liquid crystal thermometers I’d been working with previously. The four include Chemoseal, which protects healthcare workers while delivering chemotherapy; Biliquant, which measures biliruben in the blood to diagnose jaundice in infants, EasyFlow, which allows multiple patients to be connected to the same oxygen concentrator; and a temperature sensor for neonates in incubators.  While a lot of enthusiasm was shown for all of our technology, not all of it was deemed completely applicable to our location. For example, Paeds nursery doesn’t have any incubators. A temperature sensor would be of penultimate importance to having an incubator itself. Also, both Paeds and Chatinkha nurseries have access to very high-quality flow splitters, which are sufficient for the needs of both nurseries and their access to working oxygen concentrators. When a nursery only has two working oxygen concentrators, it doesn’t need three oxygen flow splitters. Despite some of these realizations, the nurses we interviewed were happy to continue giving us feedback about the technology even when they didn’t think it applicable to them. I think we will return to Houston ready to give the design teams who made this equipment a lot of information on the pros and cons of their designs.

For me personally, the technology surveys have been some of my favorite projects in Queens. As someone with a strong interest in global development and healthcare, it has been a privilege for me to get to explore more of the wards and spend time talking to nurses and clinicians. Working here has taught me so much, and my technical, medical, and cultural knowledge base has grown incredibly. I have matured a lot as a person because of my experience so far, and I have a much stronger faith in my self-awareness and my awareness of the rest of the world. With any luck, the next three weeks will give me the chance to ensure that I have been giving back to the same degree as I have been receiving from this trip.