As I sit here writing my first blog post, it’s hard to believe that in less than 48 hours Jacinta, Caleb, and I will be boarding a plane at George Bush Intercontinental Airport to begin the first of nine weeks in Malawi! This summer the three of us, along with Aakash and Emily who leave next week, will be living in Blantyre, Malawi and working at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (henceforth known as QECH) to get feedback on student design projects and The Polytechnic – University of Malawi (henceforth known as Poly) to help develop bioengineering curriculum.
As BTB interns, we will test existing technologies developed at Rice and demonstrate them to healthcare providers to obtain feedback, pursue a project assigned by our mentors on the site, and work independently to identify a new project and implement a solution. Each member of our team has a unique set of skills that they are bringing to our time in Malawi, and I am excited to see how our specific talents and goals work together throughout the summer. Though I know that the nature of our projects will likely change in response to the needs of our partners, as the summer begins, I have three main projects that I will be working on:
Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital – Design Projects
In the global health program at Rice, students are required to take a minimum of two design-based classes: GLHT 360, a semester long introduction to global health design and GLHT 450/451, a year-long capstone design course. This past semester, I was enrolled in GLHT 360 and, along with Caleb and two other teammates, worked on the development of a phototherapy dosing meter, a device that measures the intensity of blue lights used to treat neonatal jaundice, to help insure that neonates are getting the correct amount of light therapy. By the end of the semester we were able to create a successful prototype, and we are going to be sharing our meter with doctors and nurses at QECH to gain feedback on how we can develop our prototype to better meet their needs.
In addition to the device I worked on, we are also taking several other prototypes developed by Rice students this year. These devices include: two liquid crystal-based thermometers, an incubator temperature sensor, a flow splitter for oxygen concentrators, chemoseal – sealed caps for chemotherapy drugs, BiliQuant – a jaundice diagnostic tool, and a tablet app to monitor vital signs. Since classes have ended we have been busy studying how these devices work and building duplicates of many of the prototypes to take with us on our trip.
The Polytechnic – University of Malawi Curriculum
The second project on which I will be working is developing bioengineering curriculum with Poly faculty. Poly is one of the colleges of the University of Malawi and, among other things, it offers degree programs in civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering. However, the most exciting thing to me is that this year the faculty is planning on starting a new program – bioengineering! The bioengineering program will be closely affiliated with their current electrical engineering program. Jacinta, Caleb, and I are all studying bioengineering at Rice, and we are going to be bringing over lesson plans from several bioengineering labs currently offered to Rice students. The labs we will be focusing on are Medical Device Troubleshooting and Medical Instrumentation, both which apply electrical engineering knowledge to solve medical problems. Because the faculty at Poly have limited experience with bioengineering curriculum, we hope to team with them to develop labs for their new bioengineering students.
These past several weeks Caleb, Jacinta and I have been working with Dr. Ramos, the Rice University instructor of these two labs. Our goal has been to thoroughly understand the lab curriculum as well as the inner workings of the devices that we will be expected to know how to fix. Some of the medical devices that we will possibly be repairing include suction pumps, microscopes, centrifuges, and oxygen concentrators.
bCPAP Trials
The bubble continuous positive airway pressure device (or bCPAP for short) was a senior design project developed by Rice students in 2010. Since its inception, the device has been incredibly successful, and it is currently in production by 3rd Stone Design. For the past several years, btb interns have worked on various CPAP related projects: getting design feedback, collecting data, and training healthcare workers. I am incredibly excited to have the chance help with the ongoing trials for this device! Aakash and I will be spending several weeks of our internship traveling to various hospitals in Malawi with the goal of collecting data and gaining feedback for the bCPAP studies.
The Next Two Days…
We still have a lot of work to do before we can leave for Malawi. In the next two days we need to finish packing (we each have one personal suitcase and two suitcases filled with BTB technologies and CPAP supplies), finish making a new phototherapy dosing meter and a new incubator temperature sensor, buy the necessary equipment to teach our instrumentation lab, prepare lesson plans, and more. Our trip itself will take over 30 hours, bringing us through Washington D.C., Ethiopia, and Lilongwe. I know it will be a lot of work, and probably the majority of expectations I have about our trip will end up being totally wrong, but I am so excited. I have traveled overseas before, but this will be my first time in Africa. I am especially looking forward to working so closely with patients, doctors and engineers. As a bioengineering student who hopes to be a doctor, I love seeing how I can use my engineering skills in the medical field. To me, the great thing about this internship is the need-driven design process: we are basing our innovations and curriculum on needs that doctors in developing countries see in the clinic every day, and I can’t wait to get started!