Pelvic exam simulator for educating midwives in rural Africa
The training of health professionals in US medical schools relies increasingly on sophisticated simulators.  Low-cost versions of these devices are needed in poor rural settings where midwives deliver the bulk of pre-natal and post-natal care. Northwestern is working with the African Midwife Research Network in Lusaka Zambia to design and build an appropriate simulator for use across southern Africa.

Arsenic removal from drinking water in the Atacama Desert, Chile
The little water available in northern Chile is contaminated by natural inputs of arsenic from hydrothermal discharges generated by the Puna-Altiplano volcanic complex.  As a result, public health in this area has historically been impacted by the chronic arsenic exposure in drinking water. Rural mountain villages typically have only limited and often poorly functioning arsenic removal systems.  A collaborative effort between NU and Pontificia maintainable by small communities and tailored to local water chemistry.

HIV Diagnostics in Poor Regions
Newborn children of HIV positive mothers need to be tested for the virus; the cheap way of testing for HIV in adults is an antibody-based test, however, and all neonatal infants carry antibodies of their mothers and will therefore test positive whether they carry the virus or not. In the United States and in other advanced countries, a $300 PCR test is done to test for the presence of the HIV virus. This expense is too large in countries like Botswana where the estimated per capita healthcare spending range from $8 to $50 per year. In addition, clinics often lack clean water, refrigeration, and electricity. PCR depends on precise thermal cycling. Our students reasoned that chemical energy (phase change materials) could be substituted for electrical control, and a greater reliance on human labor (inexpensive and inexhaustible in these regions) to yield reliable, low-cost test results.

Affordable Digital Radiology
This project involves providing diagnostic imaging equipment with digital and teleradiology capability, service, and training to assist in strengthening medical imaging infrastructure and medical support services to meet established clinical standards. This project also involves developing a delivery, funding and support strategy to ensure that qualified clinical sites receive and apply the technology on a sustained basis and in compliance with accepted international clinical standards.

Instrumentation for Premature Infants in Kangaroo Mother Care
This project involves providing inexpensive apnea monitoring for premature infants in poor environments where neonatal care is provided primarily by the mother and immediate family. It also involves providing inexpensive phototherapy for jaundice in premature infants in poor environments where neonatal care is provided primarily by the mother and immediate family.

Tuberculosis Tracking System
The project involves monitoring diagnostic and treatment regiments in the Site B clinic, which serves the people of the largest of Cape Town’s townships. Because patient tracking is largely unavailable in these clinics, patients diagnosed with TB are too often lost to follow-up as a result of inefficient filing and communications systems. The problem is exacerbated by patient behavior and systematic disincentives that discourage patients from presenting for follow-up. This is an ambitious project which employs the ideas of both industrial engineering and organizational behavior.

Breast Feeding in Rural Africa
Mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV occurs in approximately 25 percent of births to HIV positive mothers. If the mother chooses to breast feed her infant, the incidence of MTCT of HIV more than doubles, with some figure suggesting infection rates of more than 90 percent. Yet mothers continue to breast feed infants despite intervention from aid workers. The reasons are multiple. Formula is expensive, but even when provided by international aid organizations, it requires clean water. The incidence of infant death and morbidity related to the lack of clean drinking water is commonplace. In addition, HIV/AIDS carries a powerful stigma. Women and their infants have been cast out of villages or shunned when HIV is revealed. Feeding an infant from a bottle is a clear signal that the mother has HIV. When the students were presented with this problem, their solution was as simple as it was elegant: pasteurization of breast milk combined with a hollow breast prosthesis to conceal the fact that the mother was not breast feeding.

Transtibial Prosthetic for Children
Children with lower limb amputations are relatively rare in the United States and other advanced countries, but landmines and tribal warfare have sadly made such cases all too common in many poor countries. Students were assigned to design an affordable transtibial (below-knee) prosthesis using locally available materials and technologies that could accommodate the still-growing limb. The student’s solution: taking inspiration from head and neck immobilization systems used in MRI, they built a socket made from polystyrene beads in a flexible air-tight polyethylene sleeve. Using a hand actuated vacuum pump (a common bicycle pump with the piston reversed), they evacuated the air from the sleeve, leaving a firm, custom molded surface inside a molded plastic socket.

Other projects include: a premature infant incubator for Bangladesh, a prosthetic hand for agricultural workers in Central America, a TB diagnostics kit for rural Sub-Saharan Africa, systems for malaria prevention, cell phone-based telemedicine, and more. In each of these projects, students phoned and e-mailed around the world to interview potential users and others with needed expertise to gain a deep understanding of the problems involved.

 

Summer projects, which take place both in Chicago and around the world, include:

Mobile Asthma Van – Chicago
The greater Chicago area has one of the highest rates of asthma in the country. It especially affects children in underserved areas of the city who are diagnosed but not trained in the management of their illness. The Chicago Mobile CARE Foundation sends three mobile units equipped with a physician, nurse and technician to 60 Chicago schools to evaluate and educate the patients and their families about self management. The program, which has served more than 45,000 children, uses basic diagnostic equipment such as a peak flow meter and spirometer and track the child’s health over a period of years. Northwestern graduate engineering students are studying the best practices of this unique health delivery system and are responding to challenges to improve the delivery of services and communication of data. 

Apnea Monitor for Premature Infants in Cape Town, South Africa
Responding to a high incidence of infant mortality in South Africa, Northwestern engineering students learned about the Kangaroo Mother Care, in which newly born premature infants are swaddled against their mothers’ chests for a period of several months while they gain weight and develop. The biofeedback mechanisms in the mother react to changes in the infant’s temperature and either lower or raise their body heat to the needs of their baby. However, the infants sometime stop breathing and need to be stimulated. The students have designed a light adhesive LED monitor which sets off an alarm to wake the mother when the infant’s breathing stops. The students have applied for a patent for this device. 

Phototherapy for premature infants in Kangaroo Mother Care
This project involves providing inexpensive apnea monitoring for premature infants in poor environments where neonatal care is provided primarily by the mother and immediate family.  It also involves providing inexpensive phototherapy for jaundice in premature infants in poor environments where neonatal care is provided primarily by the mother and immediate family.

Digital Radiology for First Referral Hospitals in Cape Town, South Africa
In the summer of 2008, five Northwestern Biomedical Engineering master’s degree students, working in cooperation with the University of Cape Town and the Department of Health, Provincial Government of Western Cape, designed and deployed a digital radiography system in a Township Community Health Center in Cape Town, which serves 300 to 400 patients daily. The primary concerns are: tuberculosis; cardiac complications/ failure; asthma; trauma/fractures; and arthritis. After spending several weeks assessing the site, evaluating patient flows, evaluating the needs and resources of the center, and talking with the stakeholders, they designed, purchased and installed a digital radiography system and engineered the software and hardware to ensure appropriate functionality and interoperability. This system is now serving as a prototype for the World Health Imaging Alliance.  www.worldhealthimaging.org

Other projects: