On the Road Again: Project Rwanda 2010

by Gale Wiley
February 23, 2010

For the second consecutive year, two professors and four teams of Rice MBAs are flying 10,000 miles to Rwanda over spring break to commercialize medical technologies developed and tested by Rice engineering students.

But this year, there's an added twist.

Each team will consist of four MBAs plus a Rice undergraduate engineering student who will serve as technical advisor for the team. The engineers will answer technical questions, observe the devices in the field, and make recommendations for possible product modifications. The MBAs will focus on commercializing their products.

Two-day flight from Houston to London to Nairobi to Kigali.

Product Line Up

The teams will work with Rwanda's health community to develop business plans for four products:

• a lab in a backpack,
• an intravenous therapy (IV) monitor,
• a clamp to regulate syringe dosing, and
  
• a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device for aiding infants' breathing.

Accompanying the teams are Professors Marc Epstein and Maria Oden.

The trip is part of Epstein's course, Technology Commercialization in Developing Countries. Oden is an engineering professor and director of Rice's Oshman Design Kitchen where the medical technologies were developed by Rice undergraduate engineers. (See NPR story below.)

Lab in a Backpack

Backpack (Life Packs, Inc.) Team
Vikas Bahl (MBA), Vani Rajendran (undergrad), Sharad Malhautra (MBA),
Leonard Yowell (EMBA), Tonny Yiu (MBA), Vicki Chang (not pictured; MBA)

The backpack team (aka Life Packs team) will be offering five versions of their backpack: a portable diagnostic lab which can diagnose diseases such as TB and malaria, a dental backpack for routine check-ups and tooth extractions, an OB-GYN backpack that can be used for prenatal and pap smear exams, a vision backpack that includes surgical tools, and a community health backpack that allows health workers to perform first aid and basic disease screening.

Battery-powered IV Monitor

IV Drip (Smartdrip) Team
Faraz Palliwala (MBA), Sachin Agrawal (MBA), Laura Krone (undergrad),
Shelley Cao (MBA), William Yester (MBA)

The SmartDrip IV Monitor is a "low-powered portable device that monitors the drip rate of an IV-infusion and adjusts it accordingly through a motorized clamp." The unit regulates drip rate and volume, features that can help health care workers faced with administering multiple IV's.

Controlled-dose Clamp

Controlled-dose Clamp (Easy-Dose) Team
Karthik Narayanan (MBA), Kristin Anderson (undergrad), Jan Goetgeluk (MBA),
Britt Kennedy (MBA), Lee Willeford (MBA)

The Easy-Dose device fixes to an oral syringe to regulate dosage. According to the team's marketing materials, medication errors can worsen a patient's condition, lengthening treatment and in some cases causing death. In many places in the developing world, caregivers use spoons or cups or unmarked oral syringes.

CPAP

CPAP (infantAIR, Inc.) Team
David Tipps (MBA), Will Pike (MBA), Cynthia Hu (MBA),
Martha Vega (MBA), Jocelyn Brown (undergrad)

The infantAIR team will be introducing Rwandans to "Baby Bubbles," a device that helps babies breath "by gently keeping their lungs inflated, thus increasing oxygenation." The continuous positive aireway pressure (CPAP) device is inexpensive and easy to use.

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Documentary about Project Rwanda 2009

For the inaugural class in 2009, Epstein's MBAs showed four different technologies to Rwandan officials: an incubator for preemies, a hand pump dosing device, a nutrient supplement powder, and an early version of the lab-in-a-backpack.

A three-part documentary reports the experiences of the Incubator Team:

Part I click here.
Part II click here.
Part III click here.

For a short, five-minute version of the documentary, click here.

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Houston NPR Affiliate's Lab-in-a-Backpack Story

In January, the local NPR station ran the following radio story by Wendy Siegle about the Rice's Design Kitchen and the Lab-in-a-Backpack:

After the devastating earthquake, the world's eyes are on Haiti. Some say the tragic event reemphasizes the country's need for stronger infrastructure — especially in the medical sector. A group from Rice University spent time in Haiti last year to test a compact medical tool they developed that can increase access to healthcare in Haiti and other developing countries. From the KUHF NewsLab, Wendy Siegle reports.

"All of the materials are contained within this heavy duty hiking backpack. And inside is a microscope and a centrifuge…."

Rice University student Jocelyn Brown is showing me Lab-in-a-Backpack — an ultra-portable diagnostic laboratory she helped design and engineer with about twelve other students. At first glance it resembles a pack an adventurous hiker might take on a trekking expedition through the Himalayas. But after peeking inside, I discover there’s not much room for your socks. Instead, the pack is fitted with general purpose diagnostic tools.

"They diagnose what a physician might want to do in a general physical exam, along with, in specific countries, very specific tests that might work for diseases in those specific countries."

That’s Maria Oden, an engineering professor at Rice. She’s also the director of Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen where most of the work on Lab-in-a-Backpack was cooked up. She says the thirty-two-pound pack is custom designed to be used in developing countries, like Haiti, where access to health care is often extremely limited.

"In order to get health care, either the people have to walk a very long way to a health clinic, or for the diagnostic Lab-in-a-Backpack the physician can go to a much more rural location and have the opportunity to do diagnostic tests that they normally would need a laboratory for."

Last summer Brown, who’s a senior bioengineering major at Rice, field-tested the diagnostic Lab-in-a-Backpack in Haiti, a country current facing the tragic effects of one its worst-ever natural disasters.

"It was a very impactful experience; just witnessing the extreme lack of health care in Haiti was quite shocking."

Brown says that the Lab-in-a-Backpack was—and still is—very useful in Haiti, because it can be used on diseases highly prevalent in the region.

"It can diagnose TB, malaria, several very common infectious diseases and provide basic treatment as well."

In addition to the diagnostic Lab-in-a-Backpack, the students have created several other models for various uses. These include an OB/GYN pack, a dental pack and an eye care pack. Because the packs are most effective in providing basic care, Oden says they have many limitations when it comes to treating victims during a crisis situation. But new designs are in the works.

"There’s an opportunity to develop a backpack that would be specific for emergency care which might be even more appropriate for the disaster that's happening right now."

For now, the creators of the two-thousand dollar Lab-in-a-Backpack are fine-tuning the models and figuring out ways to get more packs sent to developing countries. Last month, twenty-four packs were sent to Ecuador. Over the next year, the packs will treat an estimated one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand Ecuadorians.

From the KUHF NewsLab, I’m Wendy Siegle.