It’s hard to imagine that a project that started in a classroom back at Rice made it all the way to the the hospital halfway across the world. 5 months ago, we had an idea, and today, Christine and I demonstrated to Dr. Kommwa, Dr. Meja, and the others at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital how we made that idea into a reality. We should’ve been nervous, standing in front of a room full of doctors, but I was excited. I was excited to talk about we had built and to learn about what else needed to be done to our device, the PneumaShoe.

Standing in front of them, we had to make sure our explanation was tailored for the doctors who sat before us. They didn’t want to know about the Arduino, the long hours debugging it, or the circuit components. They wanted to know about how it would be used, which patients it was meant for, its price, and its maintenance. Once we had convinced them of the device’s worth, they wanted to know about the human factors involved.

“The motor’s a little loud.”

-Medical Student

The motor he was referring to clattered against the device’s wooden frame. In our defense, it wasn’t ear-shattering, but we had already brainstormed ways to muffle the sound.

“Can you add wheels to it? What about some lights so that we know it’s working?”

It all came back to human factors. They started making suggestions to improve its usability within the hospital. They wanted it to be smaller, quieter, easily moved from patient to patient. The surveys we passed around eventually made their way back to us with a variety of results – all food for thought once we got back to the Poly.