Hey, am Bernadette Hara, a fourth year student studying electrical and electronic engineering at The Malawi University, Polytechnic. I am interested in medical electronics that is the reason why I applied for this internship so I could apply the knowledge I have to designing, modifying and repairing medical devices.
The last two weeks so far have been so educational and fun. The first week was mainly just for introductions. We interacted with our fellow interns from Rice University . We taught them some common words in our local language, had them taste some local food and then show them around the campus. We were also introduced to equipments in the design studio, so we could be familiar with them as we will be using them for the next coming weeks of this internship. After the end of the first week I have learnt how to solder, and also be able to design a component on Autodesk inventor and then print it on a 3D printer or cutting it using the laser cutter. By the end of this internship I believe I would be a pro in all of these machines and software’s. After familiarizing ourselves to the equipments in the design studio we were introduced and assigned to the projects to be done during the six week internship. The project I will be working on during the internship is Repairing Medical Devices. The project expects us to come up with procedures on how to fix common faults in medical equipments. Medical devices that are to our focus are the Oxygen concentrators, Radiant warmers, bCPAP pumani and the suction.
The second week I had to prepare a questionnaire for the research with my partner. Then we went to Mulanje district hospital, Zomba central hospital, Chiradzulu hospital and Thyolo districts hospital to collect the necessary data that will be helpful when doing the project. One thing I observed from all the hospitals is that they have a lot of damaged oxygen concentrators and they are not fixing them because they do not have spare parts. After collecting the data, they say a little fun doesn’t hurt so we went to have fun at Sunbird Ku Chawe and Hapuwani lodge
….…………………………………………………..