In my fourth blog I wrote about our visit to PAM. Since then, the seven of us evaluated all of the different ideas for projects that we gathered there, and have developed a plan of action for the rest of the summer.

First, we talked about all of the observations we made at PAM until we could translate them into a list of potential projects. Then, we narrowed down that list to nine projects that we all thought could be feasible for the amount of time and people that we had to work with. From there, we each voted on our top 5 favorite projects to determine which ones we should pursue. It was really exciting to see that our favorite project had a unanimous vote of 7 and that the 2nd, 3rd and 4th place projects all still had a resounding majority vote.

Project	Priority (# of votes)	Estimated Duration (weeks)
Suction pump supplement to prevent overflow	7	3
Radial flow splitter	6	1/2
Platform to promote Poly/Rice student communication (probably website)	6	continuously
Constant temperature monitor for babies to prevent hypothermia, for hospital and at home use	5	2
Oxygen concentrator supplement or modification to promote less frequent breaking	3	—
Develop more communication channels between the Poly and their community in Blantyre	3	—
Bililight stands	3	—
Preventative maintenance plans for PAM	1	—
Autoclave supplement to prevent turning on the device before adding water	0	—

Based on our estimation of how long each project will take to complete, we have decided to pursue the suction pump, flow splitter, Poly/Rice website and temperature monitor. Already, we’ve put together a prototype of the flow-splitter from mostly locally available materials, and have started research for the suction pump project. In addition to the research we’ve been conducting online, today we stopped by PAM again to take a closer look at some of their broken suction pumps. The idea still needs development, but one promising lead is to attach infrared sensors externally to the collection jars so that when the liquid reaches the level of the sensor an alarm will sound and the pump will be turned off.

In other news, last week we spent a morning in the library helping Charles, Andrew, Christina and Francis set up their blogs. I added hyperlinks, so click on their names to read their latest posts!

Yesterday we went to the Physical Assets Management (PAM) Department at QECH. It was a very enlightening visit. One of the engineers there, a man named Joseph, graciously spent two hours showing us around the warehouse, talking with us about commonly broken devices, and generally giving us insight into the inner workings of PAM. I was hoping that the visit would provide inspiration for at least one design project for us to work on this summer, but I came away with more ideas than we could possibly finish and a huge amount of respect for the work the PAM engineers do.

According to the Malawian government website, “[PAM’s] major mandate is to ensure that all physical assets i.e. infrastructure and equipment are both available and functional in all the government health institutions.” (1) The PAM office we visited today is one of four regional offices in Malawi which collectively serve 33 hospitals and over 400 health centers. They must do all of this within a very limited budget and staff, and regularly must compete with other departments for the procurement of resources. (For example, in lieu of equipment or components to fix medical devices, the hospital often elects to allocate their budget towards more immediately needed items like medicines.)

More frustrating perhaps than a flat out lack of resources, however, was the massive collection of devices and components that had been donated to the hospital but could not be used. For example, Joseph showed us a pile of donated syringe pumps that are unusable because they did not come with consumables and lack the proper transformers. He told us at this point all they were good for was selling for scraps, in which case you could get 50 kwacha (about $0.11) for 10 syringe pumps.

  As far as project ideas go, one of the promising ones is for a device to prevent the overflow of suction machines. Sister Florence, one of the nurses from Chatinkha Ward, also told us this was a large problem for the nurses. In their current state, the hospital’s suction machines collect bodily fluids into a jar, but the machine continues to produce suction even after the jar is full. This causes fluids to be sucked into the machine which sometimes induces irreparable damage to the machine. A project to combat this problem would be some kind of alarm for the nurses that would indicate when the jar was nearly full, or maybe even some sort of self-regulating system that switched the machine off when the jar was full. Other ideas revolved around the oxygen concentrators, one of the more frequently broken devices at QECH. An oxygen concentrator project could be as simple as producing clear and effective signage to warn against dangers like getting the concentrators wet, or it could be much more involved like modifying/replacing the molecular sieve beds which are a common source of failure for the overall device.

In any case, we haven’t picked a design project just yet, (we are going to discuss all of our ideas together today,) but needless to say I’m excited about the prospect of working closely with PAM to create a device for which there is a demonstrated need.

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(1) For more info about PAM and their mission statement, visit the Malawi government site link included here: https://www.malawi.gov.mw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=54&Itemid=84

I haven’t posted for this past week because we’ve been full steam ahead on our Phototherapy Dosing Meter project at the Poly, and wifi’s been pretty spotty lately. We’ve made significant progress last week, though, and anticipate finishing out the project by the end of this week.

We started by comparing and contrasting the Engineers without Borders (EWB) analog, Rice analog, Poly digital, and commercially available models. We brought a Rice model with us, Professor Molyneux (1) let us borrow an EWB one from QECH, we read over the final report for the Poly one (2), and found user manuals for the commercial models online.

We decided to go with a digital model to avoid the drawback of calibration drift that accompanies the less expensive analog designs. With an analog ammeter, extended use or rough handling of the device can lead to changes in the way the mechanical components operate which would result in inaccurate readings.

Much of our design ideas draw from the aforementioned Poly design, but one of the large changes we made was in the device housing. We visited the Chatinkha Ward at QECH where the phototherapy lights are implemented and spoke with nurses there to gather more contextual information about how are device would be used. Then, we spent one afternoon brainstorming different designs and even set up a phototherapy light at the Poly to get a better feel for how each proposed design would interface with the existing set-up at QECH.

Our largest remaining tasks for this project are to actually build the casing and then to calibrate our device with a commercially available model that we will have access to at the end of this week. (Calibration is still initially required for digital models to match up the current generated by the photodiode and the corresponding irradiance. So far we haven’t been able to identify a programmable correlation between the two.) Aside from these tasks, we will also spend some time tomorrow visiting the Physical Assets Management (PAM) department at QECH to scout out another design project for us to work on this summer. I’m very excited for this visit and can’t wait to see how a global health design project evolves when it is being designed across the street from where it will be used rather than across the ocean.

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(1) The previous head of Pediatrics at QECH

(2)  We had a report in lieu of the prototype because it had since be disassembled to reuse the components for other students’ design projects. Apparently, this is common practice for many of the design projects at the Poly, but the documentation and records they kept were so thorough it didn’t pose much of a problem for us.

 

 

All of our brainstormed casing ideas laid out. My personal favorite is Christina’s baby doll design. It is on the far right on the second to last row. Eliminated for availability of materials and effectiveness, but not cuteness factor. Way to think outside of the box, Christina!

This week was a whirlwind. There has been so much new information to take in, and so I thought I’d use a blog entry to introduce some of the people we’ve met and places we’ve been during our first week in Blantyre.

New Faces

Dr. Gregory Gamula is the head Electrical Engineering professor at the Poly. He’s been pretty busy this week finishing up grading for the semester that just ended, but he still very graciously spent some time with us to introduce us to the key players involved in our internship this summer and to welcome us to the university.

Dr. Alick Vweza is a engineering lecturer at the Poly who will be working closely with us this summer on furthering our various projects.

Mr. Million Mafuta is another engineering lecturer at the Poly and he will be one of our main resources in helping plan the freshman engineering orientation week. We meet with him on Monday to discuss our plans.

The Four Poly Interns’ names are Christina, Francis, Anjrew and Charles. The first three are studying electrical engineering while Charles is studying mechanical. They are all rising fifth year students, (at the Poly, an engineering degree is five years because the first year is spent doing more general studies,) and it looks like we’ll spend most of our time this summer working with them. They are exceedingly kind and unbelievably smart. Just as soon as we would show them one of the prototypes we brought, they would generate a dozen new design changes and even possible spin-off projects!

New Places

Kabula Lodge is the place we are staying. We live in a house down the road a little way from the main lodge. My favorite part is having our own kitchen. Already the five of us have had great fun cooking dinners, and on Friday night we even had the Poly interns over to help us learn to make some traditional Malawian cuisine.

The University of Malawi Polytechnic is where my team will be working this summer. The Poly interns gave us the grand tour on Tuesday, and so far we’ve been primarily working from a computer lab in the main building.

Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) is a massive, sprawling, bustling hospital, just from the little bit of it that I’ve seen.

Shoprite/Chipiku/Superior are all grocery stores we shopped at this week. Shoprite is the biggest, but Chipiku and Superior are closer to the Poly so we’re able to run by them on our way home from work if needed.

The Market – we finally went to the market yesterday! It is quite the experience. It is loud and exciting and there are lots of fresh produce and friendly people. I’m learning Chichewa pang’onopang’ono, (little by little,) but already I’ve found that the more you know, the better deals you can make.

     After three weeks of working with my teammates Emily Johnson and Sarah Hooper at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) at Rice University in preparation for this internship, I could not be more excited to begin our work at the Polytechnic (henceforth known as the Poly) in Blantyre. We have several projects that will take up the majority of our time this summer including technologies in various stages of development, helping our professors Dr. Saterbak and Dr. Wettergreen run an Engineering Workshop for the Poly faculty, and planning/coordinating an Engineering Orientation Week for the incoming Poly engineering freshman. And of course, on top of these projects, we will always be on the lookout for future projects that could be brought back to Rice.

Here’s an update on some of the technologies we’ll be working on this summer:

Phototherapy Dosing Meter

The dosing meter is a durable and inexpensive device built to calibrate the phototherapy light incubator built by Rice BTB. We built a complete dosing meter prototype to better understand for ourselves how the device works, and are packing all the necessary components to build multiple more prototypes at the Poly with the engineering students there.

Mechanical Breast Pump

A mechanical breast pump was developed several years ago through a Rice 360 class, and we used this previous model as a springboard for future ideas. This project is one we will be working closely to design with the Poly faculty and students in order to make sure it is an appropriate and sustainable design, but in order to do this, we had to acquire some materials that could be useful for prototyping. For example, we packed various means of suction including a reverse engineered bike pump and the bulb of a turkey baster.

bCPAP Heater

The bCPAP Heater is a sleeve that wraps around the bCPAP tubing in order to heat the air delivered from the bCPAP to the babies it serves. The goal of the device is to reduce neonatal hypothermia of its users. Along with another intern team traveling to Namitete, we built 2 working prototypes of the heater to demonstrate to doctors, nurses and engineers.

Flow Splitter

The Flow Splitter is a low-cost device that directs the flow of oxygen from a single oxygen concentrator to up to 5 patients. We have acquired a previously completed prototype of the Flow Splitter and the materials to make multiple more prototypes. We plan to present this technology to the Physical Assets Management, and after we receive their feedback will we determine how to proceed with the development of this technology.

Rolling Frame + Harness

The Rolling Frame and Harness was originally a freshman design project built for a physical therapy center in a refugee camp in Ghana. It is designed to be a partial weight-bearing device to assist children with a range of physical disabilities learn how to walk. We are taking a 1/4 scale PVC model of the device to show to the faculty at the Poly as a potential design project for Poly freshman to work on. Additionally, we will show the prototype to physicians and therapists while we are here to see if they have any feedback on how to improve the device.

Respiratory Rate Timer

We are taking 2 different versions of working respiratory rate timers. They were developed separately by 2 different teams through 2 different classes at Rice. While both work at counting respiratory rates, they are several iterations away from meeting some of their design criteria (like being small enough to fit in a pocket and cost under $1 to mass produce,) so these could be another project we develop alongside Poly students.

Here is the progress/plans we’ve made so far for the Engineering Workshop and Orientation:

Workshop

Our biggest stateside job for the workshop was acquiring Dr. Saterbak and Dr. Wettergreen’s requested list of prototyping materials. (We stuffed 2 suitcases to their max capacity of 50 pounds each!) When we’re in Blantyre, we will also need to source a list of materials they sent us that can be found locally.

Orientation Week

Because elements of the Orientation are still unclear, (like the number of students, how many hours per day, etc…) we spent our time at the OEDK gathering as much possibly useful information and talking to as many knowledgeable people as we could. We’ve gathered materials and ideas and created some tentative schedules. More than anything we’ve done so far, though, I look forward to meeting with Poly faculty and students to hear their ideas so that we can make sure the week is one that is important and relevant to the people it is serving.

     But after all the planning and work on the front end, I think what I’m most excited about is that we’ll have to be ready to be flexible and attentive when we’re actually there. In order to create truly meaningful and sustainable devices and programs, I believe it will be extremely important to listen to and work closely with the people who will actually be using them. I can’t wait for this type of collaboration and I can’t wait to see what great things come out of this summer!

Until next time – CD

Useful Links:

OEDK website: http://oedk.rice.edu/

The Poly website: http://www.poly.ac.mw/