With only three weeks left in the internship, we are officially in crunch time. Here is an update on what’s been going on, where we’re at, and what we have left to do:

• S.O.S. This is the working title of our suction pump accessory device, meaning “Stop Our Suction.” I’ve written a bit about this device before, but as a reminder it’s a project that originated from PAM (the Physical Assets Management department at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital—they fix the broken medical equipment). Suction pumps are commonly used machines across all wards, especially in the operating theatre, and are also commonly broken devices. They are used to remove fluids (blood, mucus, etc.) from a patient; the machine applies negative pressure through a tube, which sucks up the excess fluids and deposits them into two large bottles. The problem occurs when the bottles fill up. If a nurse or doctor doesn’t notice the bottle is full and continues to use suction after this point, the fluids back-flow into the machine, often causing irreparable damage. This is a problem throughout QECH, in the district hospitals, and most likely extending outside of Malawi. We are in the process of creating an adjustable accessory device that alerts nurses when the bottle is full, and automatically shuts off the suction pump before backflow occurs. Currently, we are in the later stages of prototyping: the circuitry is finished, the housing design is completed, and initial testing is done. Still left to do is complete the physical housing, thorough testing, and documentation.

• Chitenje Warmer. We chose this project, which originated from our professors and the maternity ward at QECH, a few weeks ago. One of the biggest challenges facing newborns—especially premature babies—is hypothermia. Kangaroo care is an effective way to combat hypothermia, however there are many cases where KMC (kangaroo mother care) isn’t possible; for instance, if the mother or baby experienced complications during birth and needs to be tended to or rushed to another ward. In this case, the baby is dried and wrapped in a chitenje, then set in a cot. (Side note: chitenje’s are extremely common 2m pieces of fabric worn throughout Malawi. I’ve yet to meet a woman who isn’t wearing or carrying a chitenje. They are used as skirts, wraps, slings to hold babies with, blankets, and more. All expecting mothers bring one or two chitenjes with them for delivery, to be used for wrapping the newborn.) There was a team at Rice this past year who showed that if you warm a chitenje before wrapping a newborn—and you cycle out newly warmed chitenjes every 30 minutes—you can keep a newborn at a healthy 37C. Once their body temperature drops a few degrees lower, though, it’s very difficult to bring them back to a healthy temperature. We are building a chitenje warmer to put this idea into practice. We are currently in the testing stage, and must make adjustments to our initial design, complete very thorough testing, and produce documentation on the device.

 

• Orientation Week. This project has definitely picked up speed these past few weeks, and will continue to do so until our last week here when the orientation takes place. There are 42 incoming biomedical engineering first-years next year at the Polytechnic, and we are working on creating a week-long orientation for this class. We are especially excited because this is the first year the Polytechnic has offered a BME curriculum, so this will be the pilot orientation week. We have created a schedule for the week (5 days, 8am to 5pm daily), and are working on setting up lecturers for various presentations. We also are responsible for many of the lectures ourselves, as well as planning the design project that will be executed throughout the week.
• Website. We’re creating a site designed to facilitate communication between Polytechnic and Rice students. It has 3 main components, the first of which is a page that details various current design projects that students submit. We have built it such that other students can easily offer feedback on the design projects, enabling students at each school to learn from the expertise of the other. We also built in a question forum, for questions that commonly rise up about material availability, cost, resources, and everyday life. Finally, we have a place where new design challenges can be submitted that students (or faculty, or industry) think up but don’t have the time or resources to tackle. It will be a way to inspire design ideas, and hopefully improve the quality of all our devices. All we have left with this project are a few aesthetic alterations, and creating the first few entries as examples!
• Other. There have been a few other small projects in the works this summer. Catherine took lead and put on a Jacaranda engineering workshop; we spent some time fixing broken bCPAPs in storage over at QECH; we’ve been doing some recon for an engineering design workshop that two Rice faculty—Dr. Saterbak and Dr. Wettergreen—are hosting this week for the Polytechnic faculty. Throughout this week, we’ll be helping them some to set up and to execute this workshop. Finally, I’ve been trying to learn as much as possible about how to improve the bCPAP heating sleeve, and will be getting a sleeve made by a local tailor soon! But perhaps most importantly, it was Christina’s birthday last Friday, so we took the opportunity to add to the list of American-desserts-we’ve-made-that-the-Malawian-interns-have-never-before-tried and made some apple pie!

There are a lot of projects being executed simultaneously right now. This internship, in addition to the loads else we’ve learned, has been a big lesson in time, project, and resource management. However as I’ve said before, with 7 dedicated people working all day every day on these projects, we move fast; we have high hopes for where we’ll be in three weeks’ time.