Author: Franklin

Team O2 Protection

Posted on by Franklin

            This past week has comprised of work, which I am so glad about. I’m glad to be taking on this journey with my team “Team O2 Protection” with Alfred and Gloria. My team is focused on creating optimized filters for Oxygen Concentrators and we have made progress on the design. We are still using HEPA filter paper but this week we will be going out to different markets and hardware stores to find filter paper which can work just as well and is easy to find in Malawi, focusing on local sourcing of materials. Our preliminary testing indicates that less than 0.5% of dust can enter through the filter which is a huge improvement to the current external filter which practically lets any fine particulates in, up to the size of sand grains even. Soon we will finalize a design for the external filter and perform more testing with different materials found here in Malawi, currently the manufacturing process of this filter is mostly simple with one complex area which we are still trying to facilitate. Next up is the internal air filter, we hope to use a similar design as the external air filter, with more focus on universality than filtering if the latter problem has been solved. A common problem here is that medical devices are donated and they are always different brands and models that arrive with no spare parts. By making this filter universal then it can be used on multiple models and brands regardless of the availability of model specific proprietary filters. The filters are also so important because less particulates will enter the concentrator and increase its longevity too.

            We finished creating both testing models, one for testing airflow of filter material and one for testing dust retention, the airflow testing model has not been used yet but will be used in the coming week when testing the other materials used for the filter.

Part of the upcoming work that will come after the testing will be the 3D modeling of the filter enclosure and figuring out how to make it universal, or as close to this as possible.

Thoughts on my stay

Posted on by Franklin

Before we all knew it is our second month here in Malawi. I came here with few expectations, I knew life was going to be undeniably different, harder in some ways and easier in others. Now that I have been here for nearly four weeks I can very confidently say that Malawi is a country that offers so much to its people and to its visitors. From small things that seem insignificant such as the view of the rolling mountains of Blantyre during breakfast, every day seems like a new gift that is offered to me. The people are kind and humble, never asking for too much and always offering to give more. It is a nice refreshing change coming from Houston, a fast moving city where there is little time to slow down and take in the life that you are living. Even school feels a bit rushed to me having deadlines and due dates constantly catching up to you. Here life does not rely so strongly on a schedule, yes, this is difficult when you schedule a meeting at 9am and it only really begins at 10:30, but you learn to live with it. At times I prefer this way of living, where there is no rush and some leeway is given to people, I know that I will have a home-culture shock when I return home having to readjust myself to relying on my calendar again and planning activities down to the minute, but for now I like the way time works here. Everything happens when it needs to happen with no unnecessary rush. People here are also more appreciative of what they have and work better with less compared to the states where we use so much and waste so much. I can see this very tangibly in the Design Studio at the Polytechnic where everything is reusable and you don’t throw things out because you know that that material or item can be used again for another purpose as opposed to throwing everything out once it has been used a single time. Another example of how things here flow smoothly with less rules or restrictions is the traffic, there are so few traffic lights and lane separation does not exist here in Blantyre, but I have yet to be in a traffic jam, cars move and drivers respect each other’s travel everyone needs to get somewhere there is no need to be selfish on the road. Then comparing this mentality to driving in Florida or in Houston where people will cut you off and run red lights because they think their drive is much more important than everyone else’s. I’m learning an insurmountable amount here in Malawi, but none of this can be learned through books or lectures, you can only learn I it by living it. The life I am experiencing here will surely change the way I approach things for the near and far future.

Coming to Malawi has made me look at life a little differently, but I will only know its impact once I come back to the states and see how my approach has changed to things that I am used to.

Meeting The Interns

Posted on by Franklin

A week of learning! We first met our fellow interns that study here at the Polytechnic on Monday, this moment of introduction was exciting and came after a long time of anticipation. There were so many students and every single one is so fun to be around, from working together to just goofing off outside. The rest of the day was spent with icebreakers and presentations of our medical technologies and looking at the projects that they have been working on all year. Later that week we were assigned our projects for the remainder of the internship.

Some of the projects that were given to us were: Oxygen concentrator filter reinvention/optimization, sieve bed (for oxygen concentrator) renewal, suction machine monitor, a continuous temperature monitor for mothers undergoing labor. My team is made up by Alfred, Gloria, and I; the project we were assigned was the oxygen concentrator filter optimization. This project was given to the interns last year and we are continuing it as well as adding to the project. The filter that was worked on last year was only for the external filter but they did not have time to continue work another filter, the internal filter. So we will be spending our time optimizing and finalizing the external filter as well as creating a universally fitting internal filter. This project is important because most oxygen concentrators used in the hospitals are used around the clock almost never turned off until they break down, the reason most of these devices fail is due to the entry of dust through the filters. The filters used regularly poorly filter the dust from the outside air. So by fixing this problem then more oxygen concentrators can be used for longer periods of time. I’ve already got ideas churning in my mind for designs of this device, I hope I have a well-advanced project by the end of this summer!

After being assigned projects and meeting the interns we were given a brief and speedy introduction to microcontrollers. Microcontrollers is a fancy term for a small electronic chip that can be programmed to control things like lights and sensors as well as process and display data. A common microcontroller is the Arduino, an open source microcontroller board, the Bilispec is actually run on Arduino. We learned how to program in Arduino and how to read and process data on the Arduino! Another program we learned to used and practice is called Autodesk Inventor. We use this program to create 3D models that can be printed on 3D printers. This program is really helpful for creating prototypes four our medical devices. The majority of the week was all learning and I know it will be supremely useful for the duration of the internship!

Then this weekend to wind down from all the work as well as a welcoming to Kristoffer the last intern, we went on 3 different safaris at the Majete community campsite including elephants, impalas, a porcupine, some hippos, crocodiles, baboons and many bird species, it was a fun end to the week!

This week is our first week of official, getting down and dirty work, the anticipation has been building up. The work will be expectedly difficult but extremely worthwhile.

Week 2: Presentations and Hospital Observations

Posted on by Franklin

This past week has been busy and all over the place, but not in a bad way. Early in the week we presented the device prototypes we brought from Rice to Rice 360 staff, students at the Polytechnic working on medical devices themselves, the Rice Dean of Engineering as well as USAID staff! We got amazing feedback from everyone there and people loved the work that was being done. My favorite part was learning about the projects being developed there, some examples were central patient monitoring systems for hospitals, phototherapy lights for jaundice in newborns and more. A very interesting project I hope to work with a bit more that was being developed at the Polytechnic was an autonomous drone that can be used to deliver food to remote villages with little access to food. The students built the entire drone from scratch. It is very inspiring and motivating seeing students at the Polytechnic build and design these devices, they most often have less resources than we may have at Rice but build such novel and impactful devices, it really shows me how your work is really dependent on your ethic and not your situation.

Later during the week we visited district hospitals, which are smaller hospitals that are government funded and closer to villages. The standard of care at these locations is enlightening, they sometimes use technology that to a westerner is outdated and sometimes old fashioned but is the norm in these locations. A lot of the problems they face in caring for the patients are simple to fix, but only in theory, such as more tools to monitor patients. But the underlying issue is that this costs the hospital a significant amount of money that they sometimes do not have. We did see the Pumani bCPAP devices in each of these hospitals being used actively! This device is incredibly helpful for infants with mild to severe respiratory problems. The nurses love the machine and it is nice to see the impact it has on the patients. The visits to these hospitals makes me glad that I am part of the Rice 360 team working to design low cost devices aimed at ending preventable deaths.

These visits also showed me how important it is to make implementation and training an integral part of introducing a device into a clinical setting. This is something that was not very obvious before but after visiting nursery and maternity wards is very apparently important.

This coming week we will begin our work with our fellow interns from the Polytechnic, I have been looking forward to this for a long time and it is about to begin! I think the projects I’m most interested in are the central patient monitoring systems and the autonomous drone delivery device.

–franklin–

Week 0.5: Settling in

Posted on by Franklin

As of today, we are completing our first (half) week here in Blantyre, Malawi. We landed on Wednesday and our travel felt endless, each of us having been in 3 different continents in the span of 3 days. During this travel I was in Europe for the first time and now it is my first time in Africa. Aside from losing a bag on our last flight and recovering it the next day, the flying was enjoyable. Travel aside, the city of Blantyre has been nothing but good to our group. The people are extremely kind anywhere you go, the food is cheap and fantastic (lunches are no more than $2!), the weather is comfortable during the day, and the views of the mountains are enjoyable at any time of day. We purchased cell phones to use locally and bought groceries to cook dinner, it was fun and complicated all at once since phones here are used on a credit basis where scratch cards are used to obtain data and minutes.

Thursday was all about introductions and locations. We visited the Rice 360 office and the NICU at Queen Elizabeth’s and we visited the “MOEDK,” which is the design studio at the Polytechnic University of Malawi. At Queen’s they have the largest NICU in the country, but they still only have about 20 beds total and the area of this ward was about the size of two small classrooms. It was humbling to see such dedicated and caring nurses watching over the infants in this unit as well as the standard of care here in Malawi. At the NICU they do not have typical incubators, they use a wooden box called a “Hot Cot” with heating bulbs underneath but this tool can sometimes overheat and harm the infant since there is no temperature control. The NICU also had no way of continuously monitoring the infants aside from the nurses making constant rounds of the ward. Being in this ward really showed the real and dire need of better tools to care for neonates, and thinking that this is in the largest NICU of Malawi. During the night shift only 3 nurses are on duty for as many infants that the NICU can hold, and at night 75% of infant deaths occur, mostly due to lack of monitoring of infants. At the Polytechnic we met Andrew and Francis, they run the design studio and we will be working with them extensively this summer.

Then, on Friday we worked all day at the Polytechnic preparing our technologies for presentations on Monday, we will be presenting to Rice 360 staff and joining them will be Dean Reginald DesRoches, our Dean of Engineering at Rice. I’m excited to show the staff the work we have been doing and the devices that have been developed by Rice students in engineering design teams. While working on these devices, one of them, Optoco, broke on us about an hour and a half before our day ended, which was very frustrating but we were able to construct a proof of concept design which will suffice for now. I’m excited to meet the other interns that study at the Poly that we will be working with in the coming weeks, I can’t wait to see the work they will be doing and what I will be able to learn from them.

The weekend was a bit more relaxed, we went to visit a tea plantation and were a part of some tea tasting, I bought myself a small bag of loose leaf tea cultivated in that plantation to bring back home. We also washed our clothes by hand for the first time, easier than I thought but quite time consuming. Drying our clothes is the hardest part because the majority of the day is cold and the sun goes down at 5 pm and it is dark by 6pm so the clothes must be out the entire day for it to dry.

For the following week we have planned to visit district hospitals on Tuesday and Thursday to perform some needs finding and to learn about the standards of care in smaller hospitals in Malawi.

One of our drivers, Edson, took us to a local restaurant where we had some of the best food I have had ever. At Njamba we had Nsima, a typical staple food here similar to grits made of Maize, some Okra, and Chambo, a typical fish that lives in Lake Malawi.

Tiwonana nthawi yina, see you later!

–franklin–

Preparations

Posted on by Franklin

In less than 48 hours I will be landing in Blantyre, Malawi. I’ve spent countless hours preparing things for this trip, from tangible items such as mosquito repellent (which got taken away at airport security..) and medical devices that were prepared and studied at the OEDK at Rice during the first two weeks of may, to intangibles such as mental preparations for a new culture and standard of care that we need to be ready for. You can only prepare so much for a two month long internship abroad in a continent on the opposite side of our planet. I also think that the tangible preparations are not as important as the intangible preparations. Yes, if our luggage does not make it on time, we would all be in trouble and have found ourselves in a difficult situation, but if we did not properly prepare for this trip and the work we will be doing then I think we would be facing even larger difficulties.

Thankfully however, the team I am going with are some of the most well respected and driven people I know. I do not have a single doubt that we will all survive and work meeting and exceeding expectations. We can only prepare so much; we can write up troubleshooting guides to student designed circuit boards but you cannot write a troubleshooting guide about unexpected obstacles, we can simply attempt to expect the unexpected. What we can do, and have done, is be as ready as possible for the events and obstacles we cannot foresee. I am entering this trip with an open mind, an inviting demeanor, and willingness to learn as much as I can. I am more excited than nervous, and leaving my fears and doubts behind.

Things I’m excited about:

  • Meeting and working with everyone! I’m excited to work alongside Malawian interns at the Polytechnic University in Malawi and am very excited to work with the nurses in the maternity ward at Queen Elizabeth’s Central Hospital.
  • Living in my own home with my fellow interns, cooking daily (will keep you updated about this), and learning to wash my clothes by hand. Lastly the food, everytime I visit a new country I attempt to try all the traditional food of that country/region.

Devices we will be bringing:

  • A continuous uterine contraction monitor
  • A Cervical cancer education model
  • Gastroschisis silo bags
  • Ostomy bags
  • A continuous Maternal Temperature Monitor
  • A Syringe pump to use with multiple brands
  • Testing strips for a jaundice diagnostic device

 

Now to fly for about 22 hours!

–franklin–