Malawi

Week 0. Preparations in the OEDK

Posted on by Hannah Andersen

Hello all!
Welcome to my blog, where I will be documenting my experiences in Malawi through the Rice 360 Summer Internship over these next few months. I’m indescribably excited for this summer, and I couldn’t be more thankful for this opportunity.

Before you commit yourself to spending several weeks following me and my blog posts, I should tell you a bit about myself.
My name is Hannah Andersen, and I’m a rising junior here at Rice University. I went to Prosper High School in Prosper, Texas, where my family still lives. I live at Lovett College, where I’m currently involved as the Outreach committee chair and Head Peer Academic Adviser. In my free time, I love pursuing the perfect cappuccino. I can often be found taking study breaks at Rice Coffeehouse or the Starbucks across the street from my dorm!

I’m pursuing a BS in Bioengineering with minors in both Global Health Technologies and Engineering Design, which means that I’ve spent a lot of time working on engineering design projects. Some examples of my past projects have been a physical therapy model for Texas Children’s Hospital and an exhibit for the Children’s Museum of Houston. My most recent and favorite project by far was through Rice 360’s design course: GLHT 360. This is where my teammates and I created OxyMon – a low cost monitor of oxygen concentration to be used on oxygen delivery machines in low resource settings in order to alert clinicians when patients are not receiving enough oxygen. Oxygen concentrator machines are vital for patients, especially infants, with respiratory distress. However, these machines break often, so our device aims to inform nurses and technicians about the concentration of oxygen actually being output by these concentrators and to alert clinicians when the concentrators are broken. One of my teammates and I will actually be taking OxyMon to Malawi (and Tanzania, in the case of my teammate, Matthew) this summer in order to get authentic feedback to guide our work on the device next semester! Very exciting.

Making more prototypes to travel with us has been the main task of this time spent preparing in the OEDK. Matthew and I have actually decided to roll out a second version of our device, which we’ve dubbed OxyTech, in order to get feedback on two different approaches to our problem space. This lead us to a super fun adventure to a store called Electronic Parts Outlet last week in order to get some supplies. Before then, I’d never seen so many different electronic parts at once, not even in ELEC 243 lab last semester. Most of our time lately has been spent planning for the building of extra prototypes of our old design (OxyMon) and the creation of initial prototypes of our new design (OxyTech). The goal is to make enough to bring two total to both Malawi and Tanzania – one OxyMon and one OxyTech per country.


From left to right: an image of the original OxyMon, the guts inside the original OxyMon, and some pre-assembled components and casing for the new OxyTech design

In addition to prototyping, everyone has been dedicating this time to the necessary preparations that come alongside international travel, such as getting vaccines and prescriptions for anti-Malaria medication (I just picked up 70 anti-Malaria pills yesterday! Boy, were they expensive). And of course, there’s the less official preparations, such as downloading a bunch of movies and music in anticipation for having unreliable wifi at our place of residence in Malawi.

These types of preparations are making the upcoming trip feel more and more real every day. Faced with equal parts excitement and nervousness, I am hesitant to preach to everyone around me that I’m about to have the Unequivocally Best Time of my Life™. Because my family is only five hours away from Rice, I have never gone this long without seeing them before. While my heart yearns to see more of the world, as much as I can, I know that this summer will be full of just as much homesickness as it will be full of wonderful new experiences. It’s going to be amazing, but it’s going to be hard, too. We’re going to have to learn how to take care of ourselves, how to balance a busy work schedule with basic tasks such as cooking and laundry (which I hear we’ll have to do by hand!), how to work on a team with people from very different backgrounds, how to “lead gently” as Dr. L says. If there’s one thing I’ve learned so far during my time here at Rice, it’s that I should not expect everything to go perfectly all the time. In fact, I should definitely expect lots of things to go wrong. I should expect myself to experience failures along the way. But, as the days go by and our departure draws nearer, I am focusing on the idea that it is through our failures that we learn the most. So, I can’t promise a summer of wild success stories where we all go to Malawi and save the whole world in one grand, victorious sweep. But, I can promise that I will work hard every day. I will work hard to lead a design team of students from Malawi and Tanzania, I will work hard to get feedback for OxyMon, I will work hard to engage in needs finding, I will work hard to get to know all the new people around me (both my fellow Rice interns and everyone in Malawi), I will work hard to understand a new culture, and I will work hard to improve myself both as a woman in engineering and as a human being. This is the learning experience of a lifetime and I will work hard to take advantage of that.

That being said, I also intend to have some fun along the way. 😉

Stay tuned for more posts in June when the adventure begins!

Cheers,
Hannah

0: Preparing for Takeoff

Posted on by Nimisha Krishnaswamy

The last couple of months have been busy with preparations. We have attended multiple orientation sessions, signed documents for our program coordinators, booked flights, made appointments to get vaccinations, and started preparing different technologies to take with us to Malawi to get feedback on. I don’t think our to-do list will be getting shorter any time soon, but with the school year ending I’m glad to have so many things keeping me occupied and excited for the summer.

In less than a month, Alex, Hannah, Kyla, Liseth, Sally, Shadé, and I will all be stepping out of a plane and setting foot in the warm heart of Africa: Blantyre, Malawi. The nerves haven’t really kicked in for me yet, I just feel so full of gratitude and excitement for this amazing opportunity and I can’t wait for us to begin our adventures in Malawi.

Right now, we are all working hard in Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) to make sure all our technologies are ready in time for us to travel. It’s been really fun and we’re all so surprised at how much we are learning so quickly. In the last week alone, I’ve learned how to use Adobe Illustrator, use a 3-D printer, use a laser cutter, design Printed Circuit Boards (PCB), and use a PCB milling machine. Of course, I still have a lot to learn, but getting to work hands-on on these projects has been so rewarding and soon we will have 8 different technologies ready to take with us:

  1. Mechanism to Lock IV Drip Rate
  2. Reusable Phototherapy Masks
  3. Automatic Bleach Sterilization Equipment
  4. Cervical Cancer Thermocoagulation Model
  5. Neonatal Temperature Monitor For Kangaroo Mother Care
  6. Low-Cost Oxygen Concentration Monitor
  7. Low-Cost, Reusable Ostomy Bags
  8. Ballard Score Gestational Age Training Model

Since there are 7 interns and 8 projects, we decided to split up the work among ourselves. I am in charge of the Neonatal Temperature Monitor for Kangaroo Mother Care. I actually started working on this project during the spring semester in my GLHT 360 class, so I’m pretty attached and super excited to get to take it to Malawi for feedback this summer.

Kangaroo Mother Care to treat hypothermia

Usually, in developed nations like the United States, hypothermic babies can be treated quite easily and effectively with incubators. However, in low-resource countries like Malawi, incubators are often too expensive and too difficult to maintain. Instead, a much more cost-effective practice known as Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) is used to treat hypothermia. As shown in the photo on the left, KMC is when the mother wraps her baby to her chest with a cloth, known as a chitenge in Malawi, in order to keep the baby warm. With the baby being in close proximity to the mother, the mother’s body warmth is able to regulate the baby’s temperature. It’s pretty effective in keeping the baby at a safe temperature, but it is still really important to have an accurate and continuous monitor that can keep track of the baby’s temperature while KMC is being performed.

 

First prototype: control unit and arm band worn by mother during KMC

The main purpose of our device is to continuously monitor the temperature of neonates, who may be premature and hypothermic, and promptly alert mothers and nurses when the baby’s temperature is too low. All this, while also being small and portable so that the mother can comfortably wear the device on her during KMC. To accomplish this, we designed a device with a control unit that has 3 LED indicators to alert mothers and nurses (blue if the temperature is too low, red if the temperature is too high, and green if the temperature is safe). The control unit also has a vibrational motor inside it which will vibrate, much like a mobile phone, to alert mothers and nurses when the baby’s temperature is either too low or too high. Finally, the control unit has a display screen to show the numeric value of the baby’s temperature. This control unit is placed in a pouch on an arm band that can be worn on the mother’s upper arm. The baby will wear a small, elastic belt around their abdomen, with a temperature probe attached that touches their skin to measure their core temperature. This temperature probe is plugged in to the control unit to continuously display the baby’s temperature reading.

 

Over the next few weeks, we will be finishing up all our prototypes, packing them in suitcases, and praying that they reach Malawi in one piece *fingers crossed*. Some of us are also going to Passport Health soon to get our yellow fever and typhoid vaccinations together, yay for bonding but hopefully I don’t pass out… I’ll keep you updated. I’ll probably be spending a lot of time trying to learn some common phrases in Chichewa (the local language), and watching YouTube tutorials + reading WikiHow posts on how to do grown-up things like washing my clothes by hand and cooking for myself for a whole summer. I can already tell this summer is going to be full of new experiences, and I’m so excited to share everything I learn with you. Next stop –> Malawi!!

— Nimisha 🙂

 

1. First Weeks Before Departure, Working in the OEDK

Posted on by Kyla Barnwell

Hello everyone! Welcome to my Rice 360 Blog!

This is my first blog post, so let me introduce myself. My name is Kyla Barnwell and I am a rising junior at Jones college majoring in Cognitive Sciences and minoring in Global Health Technology (GLHT). I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel to Blantyre, Malawi with Rice 360 this summer and we leave in a little over 3 weeks!!! It’s finally happening! The closer our departure date arrives (June 3rd), the more excited and nervous I am to start this amazing experience. Between getting all of our technologies and materials ready for departure and making sure all the other affairs (flights, vaccines, passports) are in order, I have been really busy getting ready to leave.

These past two weeks, our team of Malawi interns have been working in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) on Rice’s campus building and prototyping the necessary materials in order to make some of the technologies we will be taking over to the Polytechnic Institute and the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital. We are taking a slew of technologies including: a mechanism to lock IV drip rates, an automatic bleach sterilization machine, a neonatal temperature monitor for Kangaroo Mother Care, a training model for determining the Ballard Score Gestational Age, a cervical thermocoagulation training model, low-cost ostomy bags, a low-cost oxygen monitoring system, and reusable phototherapy masks.

One of the technologies we are taking is one that my own team has personally designed which I am very proud of. During one of our classes last semester, our team developed a model cervix that can be used train providers in a new cervical cancer treatment technique called thermocoagulation, which is essentially burning any cervical tissue lesions found on the cervix that might develop into cervical cancer. Our team worked extremely hard developing this model and we are amazed to see it actually going over to places like Malawi, Brazil, and Mozambique to get more design feedback and eventually, be used to train providers in this potentially life saving technique. At the OEDK, we worked on 3D printing the molds used make the model cervices and once our ordered materials arrive, we will get to work developing some prototypes very quickly in the next few days. The Brazil team is looking to take around 5 model cervices while we will be mainly making around 20 model cervices prototypes when we are in Malawi. I have also had the chance to learn more about 3D printing software, laser cutting, and other cool OEDK technologies that I have really not had previous exposure to. Since I am not in an engineering major, it has been very cool to watch and learn how to use some of these advanced prototyping tools and software. It was also really cool to learn how to develop a lot of the other innovative technologies we are bringing. I had been exposed to them through peer presentations in our GLHT course, but actually hands-on learning and seeing how each part is made and how it works has been so much more informative. All of the other interns have been really helpful in every project and I have really loved bonding with everyone at dinners and team meeting luncheons.

Here is a picture of the reusable model cervix my team has designed to teach cervical thermocoagulation. The model cervix can withstand temperatures up to 180 C and changes color when exposed to heat, which mimics what an actual cervix does when in contact with the thermocoagulator probe.

While in Malawi, Liseth (another Malawi intern) and I will be working together at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital. Our project mentor, Dr. Claudia Aceyman, has tasked us with some very important assignments concerning valuable human factors work and data collection. While in the hospital, Liseth and I are going to be documenting the use environment pretty extensively. This means we will be taking notes on hospital dynamics and interactions, how the environment changes from the perspectives of a doctor versus a nurse versus a patient or family member, and of course, looking into how users interact with our designed technologies and assessing how we can improve in order to best fit the needs of the user. Liseth and I have been reading a ton of articles, journals, and books on human factors research in order to decide how we can best compile and organize all of our findings. We are also looking to develop a survey/interview format that can be used to gauge usability for the Incubaby Neonatal Incubator technology (but also can be applied to other technologies as well). We are brainstorming appropriate questions to ask users while they interact with the technology. We will need to take note specifically of human behavior, abilities, limitations, cognitive resources, and other characteristics to the design of systems, tasks, and equipment/technologies that we are bringing.

Between prototyping, packing, ensuring I have the right anti-malaria pills and vaccines, and the upcoming 15 hour flight from JFK to Johannesburg,  it seems as though I already have a lot in store for me in these upcoming weeks. I definitely have a lot more in store for me once I arrive in Malawi. This trip will be the farthest from home I have ever traveled in my life, so I am a little nervous. I really hope things go very smoothly but there’s always small hiccups to be prepared for when traveling. I am glad I get to see my family back home in Atlanta, Georgia for a little while before I head off abroad. I’ve really missed a good home-cooked meal. Stay tuned for more updates!

1. Ready, Set, Prep!

Posted on by Alex Lammers

During matriculation, President Leebron began his address to our class by saying something along the lines of “We have people here from all around the world… Singapore, India, Germany… and Britton, Michigan – population 568.” As a nervous freshman starting school at a university over 1000 miles away from home, it was comforting to have my hometown mentioned in his welcome speech. It also reminded me, someone who has never traveled outside of North America, that there is a whole world out there filled with exceptional people, each with lives very different than my own. Over the course of my freshman year, I have met so many of these amazing people and been exposed to so many different ways of thinking. While working at the Polytechnic Design Studio this summer, not only am I excited to make an impact on the field of global health, but I am also excited to get to know my fellow interns from Malawi and Tanzania.

On June 3rd, Hannah, Nimisha, Shadé, Sally, and I will board a plane that will take us from Houston to London, to Johannesburg, to Lilongwe. From there, we will meet up with Liseth and Kyla, hop in a van, and ride for 4 hours to Blantyre. After many hours of travel, we will then finally rest at the Kabula Lodge and wake up the next morning ready for the start of our internship. But before all of this can happen, there is a lot of work that must be done…

360° Boot Camp

At the start of our two weeks of technology preparation in the OEDK, we found out that we will be taking 8 projects with us to Malawi…

  1. Mechanism to Lock IV Drip Rate
  2. Reusable Phototherapy Masks
  3. Automatic Bleach Sterilization Machine
  4. Neonatal Temperature Monitor for Kangaroo Mother Care
  5. Low-Cost Oxygen Monitoring System
  6. Ballard Score Gestational Age Training Model
  7. Cervical Cancer Screening Training Model
  8. Affordable Redesigned Ostomy Bags
Securing the Phototherapy Mask, protecting infant’s eyes from blue light.
Opening the IV Drip Lock mechanism with a pen.

For the past week, I have been tag-teaming three of these projects with Shadé. Together we have sewn new phototherapy masks and 3D-printed more IV drip locks to present to the nurses at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital. The masks are composed of a cotton hat and a flip down visor that prevents any blue light from damaging an infant’s retinas during phototherapy. The IV drip lock is a case that encloses the roller clamp used to adjust the dosage on an IV drip. The case can only be opened using a pen, allowing clinicians easy access to the roller clamp while keeping it away from patients or concerned family members who may want to adjust the dosage themselves.

 

Clean Machine releasing its inner bucket, removing tools from bleach solution.

Our third technology that we took responsibility for is the automatic bleach sterilization machine (a.k.a. Clean Machine). Previous 360° interns found that doctors and nurses at Queen Elizabeth clean their tools in a solution of bleach and water; however, due to issues of under-staffing, the tools are often forgotten and left to soak for too long. As a result, the bleach eats away at the metal, and the tools have to be thrown out. Last semester, a team of students developed the Clean Machine, a device composed primarily of two ordinary buckets and a kitchen timer. The device allows nurses to load tools into the inner bucket, fill the outer bucket with the bleach solution, and set a timer for a specific soak time. To prepare this technology, we laser cut the acrylic components of the device and condensed some of the wooden components of the device into easily 3D-printed files. Once in Malawi, we plan on assembling the device, implementing it at Queen Elizabeth pending the feedback of the nurses, and leaving behind the CAD files at the Poly for future prototyping.

The Next Few Weeks…

With one more week of our boot camp to go, a lot of the Malawi team’s focus is going to shift towards planning for the setup of another design studio at the Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST). Rice 360° has purchased supplies for the studio such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and other prototyping equipment. In addition to setting up these machines at the new studio, we hope to leave behind our knowledge of the engineering design process, culture of safety, and excitement for innovation that has rubbed off on each of us after spending countless hours at the OEDK.

Towards the end of next week, we’ll start to tackle the daunting task of packing everything we’re taking into as few suitcases as possible. Once that’s done, I’ll be on my way back to Michigan to spend two weeks at home before the rest of this adventure begins. Everyday our flight to Malawi grows closer, and I grow a little more nervous, but also a lot more excited about the whole experience.

June 3rd cannot come fast enough!

– Alex

 

Landing

Posted on by Kristofer

Hello, everyone! Pardon the delay in posting – I wrote this and many of the following posts many weeks ago, but had to save them until I could get some computer problems fixed. And now here we are!

22 June, 2018

These have been my very first few days in Malawi. It doesn’t take long to see life is very different here. It has already been eye-opening for me, despite having experienced many corners of the world already.
A quick introduction, since I am an atypical undergraduate, and probably an unusual global health intern as well. I’m a thirty-two year old philosophy and kinesiology major and a part owner of a small maritime company in the Port of Houston. I used to be a nuclear submariner (mechanical engineer and chemist), and am working towards a career in surgery. How did I find myself in Malawi? Well, since 2014 I have been blessed to work in the Richards-Kortum lab, and I was part of the original team that invented Bilispec. I brought a lot of diverse engineering and design experiences to our research, and now I’m here to help make our device a more sustainable reality for our partners here in Blantyre. So, my three goals:

1. Manufacture our single-use Bilispec cards locally
2. Train our friends at the Polytechnic Institute how to manufacture them
3. Equip and train our friends at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital to validate those strips for use in the hospital

Of course my fellow interns and I are all eager engineers at heart, so we’ll be supporting one another with each other’s projects as well. I am so very grateful to Rice 360 and its sponsors for allowing me to continue contributing to the Bilispec project and also to the other initiatives which my peers have undertaken at both the Polytechnic and the QECH. This is my first time in Malawi—in Africa, even—as well as my first global-health-step outside of the laboratory. It will also be my first introduction to medicine in a low-resource world, and to top it all off, my very first blog post in my life. That’s a lot of firsts! Thank you!

After a warm welcome by my new Rice family, I am all settled here at Kabula Lodge.
The weekend is about to begin, so I will have to wait until Monday to introduce myself at the Polytechnic and Queens, but I am excited to see what everyone has been up to, and to get started on my own projects! For the next few days, however, it seems we are leaving Blantyre for a two-day trip to the Majete Wildlife Preserve. What an introduction to Malawi.

 

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–

Six Weeks in the Polytechnic Design Studio

Posted on by kanamachikondi

Hi. Chikondi Kanama over here. Sorry that I have not blogged for so long that this is my second and last blog about the 2017 Lemelson Internship at Poly. Thanks to Veronica and Emily who made me feel obliged to take the responsibility to update everyone on what I have been doing.

As elicited in my earlier blog, Serena Agrawal and I have been working on the project aimed at designing and manufacturing stands for 40 bili-lights available in the studio so that the devices can be safely and effectively used in Malawian hospitals.

In the second week of the internship week we visited two Central and two District Hospitals, trying to collect data necessary for the respective projects we were assigned.

With respect to our project, we got the following feedback in summary:

  •     Nurses expressed dire need for the bili-lights for phototherapy against jaundice
  • Nurses wanted the light to swivel side ways  to create more space when they need to access the baby in the cot
  • The hospitals have different kinds of cots (plastic cots, wooden cots and the hot cot, which is basically a wooden plastic cot with a top transparent cover)

In response to the feedback and considering engineering constraints, we brainstormed possible designs and then exploited the resources generously provided in the studio to go through a number of prototype iterations before arriving at the final version we have. However, considering that we are dealing with a weight suspended over the body of a neonate, we have been much concerned with safety tests, thereby pushing mass manufacturing beyond the time scope of the internship.

Nevertheless, the internship has been a wonderful experience. I have acquired practical skills that have helped cement the engineering theory I have so that I have been part of a team that addressed real life health problems. Thank God for the wonderful workmate Serena Agrawal; may she become the great engineer as she wishes. Gratitude also to all 2017 Lemelson Polytechnic interns and Matthew Petney as well as the entire Poly Design Studio staff for always being there for us: we appeared great because great people were in the background.

Finally, may Rice University, the Malawi Polytechnic and Lemelson foundation feel it that their efforts shall perpetually transform engineering students as well as the Malawian Health Sector for the better.