Practicing their sales pitch

Kigali, Rwanda (Saturday, Feb. 27, 2010) --In the courtyard of Hotel Gorillas, the backpack team is holding its second meeting.

Vani Rajandran, a Rice bio-engineer and the only undergrad on the backpack team, is briefing her MBA teammates on each of component of the lab-in-a-backpack.

The backpack team is one of four teams bringing Rice bio-medical technology to Rwanda. Their job during their stay in Rwanda is to develop a business plan that will interest entrepreneurs.

They have five days to determine if there is a market for their product.

Vani briefs her teammates on backpack-in-a-lab.

Arrived in Kigali

Kigali, Rwanda (Saturday, February 27, 2010) -- It's quiet in Kigali with little traffic and few pedestrians.

It's the last Saturday in February, and everyone in Kigali is supposed to spend the morning cleaning -- trimming bushes, picking up trash, sweeping the road in front of their place. The morning is considered a "day of service."

And the clean up is strictly enforced. Road checks makes sure only cabs and taxi mo-peds are on the road.

We're settled in our rooms at the Hotel Gorillas. Many of the students are walking around the neighborhood.

It's a beautiful day, in the high 60s, breezy. Kigali's thousands hills are lush with fruit and vegetables.

The students are ready to work.

Safe and sound at Heathrow

We arrived without incident at London's Heathrow this morning and cooled our heels for seven-plus hours. Some of use went into town (Brrrr!) and took in the tourist sites. Fish-n-chips and a pint of Guiness on a cold, blustery day. (Yum.)

Next stop, Nairobi.

MBA Class Project Called "Most Innovative" For Launching New Businesses in Rwanda

Houston (February 26, 2010) -- Dale Dawson, entrepreneur and founder of Bridge2Rwanda, told MBA students that their class was "the most innovative and exciting" approach he had ever seen for building businesses in Africa.

The students who left this week for Rwanda to find ways to commercialize Rice medical technology are part of Professor Marc Epstein's Management 747, Technology Commercialization in Developing Countries.

Dawson, an investment banker and entrepreneur, is building schools and businesses in Rwanda.
He serves on President Paul Kagame’s Presidential Advisory Council.

Click movie controller below to see the movie.

"Our goal is to turn this idea into a flood of colleges and universities that will do very similar programs to your," said Dawson.

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.

++++++++++++++++

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.

Kigali Marketplace

OK, so it's a little late. But here it is anyway -- The Kigali Marketplace.

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elnlaZgS6Ag

Coming Home

Goodbye to Rwanda (Kigali Airport)

(SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEOS)

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

By Gale Wiley

Kigali, Rwanda – Rice MBAs who came to this African capital to commercialize biomedical technology are returning home this week with more than firsthand knowledge about commercializing biomedical technology in a developing country.

For starters, students have learned that Rwandans are a proud and gentle people who are zooming into the 21st century -- in part through outside aide, in part through dogged determination, education and hard work.

Rwanda is well organized, largely through the efforts of the country’s government, whose leadership is dominated by women who fill the gap left by men killed during the genocide. Fully 80 percent of the legislature is female.

New and Old

Kigali is a bustling, beautiful city of a thousand hills with perfect California climate. The traffic circles contain well-manicured gardens. The views from hilltop to hilltop are breathtaking.

During rush hour, Rwandans wedge themselves into mini-vans that serve as taxis. Braver souls hire mo-ped taxis piloted by helmet-wearing cowboy drivers who lean on their horns as much as their accelerators.

Kigali is booming. Everywhere there is movement. At rush hour in Kigali, throngs crowd the markets and taxi stands where scores of mini vans and mo-peds wait.

Rush hour in Kigali's mass transit hub

The well dressed employed and the ragged jobless – many talking into cell phones -- walk side by side.

In the city center you can buy low quality electronic goods and pirated CDs. A huge, enclosed market on the edge of town is like the Rwandan version of WalMart, except here you get to bargain with vendors.

Rwanda has a long way to go, however, before all of its citizens are afforded the same access as Kigalians have to electricity and clean water and centralized sewage systems. In rural Rwanda, mud brick huts that do not meet minimum standards are being condemned by the government and replaced with higher quality structures.

China has landed big contracts to add and improve roads throughout the country. Germany has built a huge mountain-top solar array.

Everyone here talks of the years before and after 1994, the year of the genocide when as many as 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered at the hands of Hutus.

The genocide happened 15 years ago, and memorials to the Tutsis are scattered through this tiny country. Hardly a person you meet doesn’t have a story about losing relatives to death during the genocide.

Press Freedom?

Rwanda’s television programming is mostly soccer clips, Rwandan music videos, and rosy interviews with government ministers and President Paul Kagame.

“Government here doesn’t air bad news,” said one young reporter who had been fired from Rwanda’s only government-controlled TV station. “Reporters who want to gather views opposite the government’s are let go.”

Unemployment

The government hires as many as people as it can, but the crush of immigrants from the countryside and neighboring countries puts pressure on an economy that is largely agricultural.
Rwanda, quite simply, needs jobs that bring value to the Rwandan economy.

Thousands of young men walk the streets here looking for work. During the day they sit in groups or prowl the city centers. In the district where huge bags of flour and sugar and consumer goods are unloaded, one thin young man yelled to me, “I’m hungry. Give me money.”

Awash with Churches and “NGO-how”

By some estimates, more than a thousand churches and nearly 300 non-governmental agencies (NGOs) work in Rwanda, providing aid, equipment, training, and what some call “NGO-how.”
Rwanda, not surprisingly, is largely Protestant. Again and again, Rwandans would say to us, “Like us, Americans are Christian.”

Like South Africa, Rwanda used the process of reconciliation to allow Tutsi victims to confront and forgive their tormentors. Although some religious leaders in the 1990’s failed Rwandans during the genocide by falling silent during the persecution and the subsequent slaughter of more than 800,000 Tutsis, still other clerics spoke up for or protected Tutsis.

Tourism

Tourists see gorillas "up close and personal"

Tourists to Rwanda come in several flavors: those who want to see the genocide memorials and the gorillas ($500 cash for a permit), those who are connected with churches and NGOs (you see these folks at the best restaurants or riding in Toyota SUVs with African drivers), and those who are simply travelers curious about Rwanda (by far the smallest group).

“Tom Cruise”

The hope for Rwanda is in the young who put in long hours at school and who pay to hear local rapper Tom Close (Rwandans say “Tom Cruise”) at live concerts.

We met the son of a seamstress who started a business with micro-finance money seeded by an American NGO.

He has big plans to grow Rwanda’s fledgling tourist industry.

“We’re building a Web site for my mother’s shop,” he said speaking perfect American English. “You will be able to order her handmade custom made shirts online. We have big plans.”

Students' route home
Kigali-Nairobi-London-Houston
36 Hours, door-to-door