TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 6 31 industry professionals and members of the community. The projects for the 2016 showcase in April were so impres- sive that the competition ended in a tie between two teams: "Brays Yourself" designed modifications to portions of the Brays Bayou in Southwest Houston to help reduce the 100-year floodplain in the area, and "Rice Outstenting" created a device to improve the process of removing ureteral stents. Sherman and her design partner, Mikaela Juzswik, were each present, pitching their mechanical breast pump for low resource settings. It is elegant in its simplicity: a rocking chair powers the pump, so a mother could sit and rock while expressing her milk— no need for hands, and no need for electricity. "In low resource settings, women don't have access to breast pumps because they're expensive," Sherman explained. "They're also difficult to repair if anything breaks, and if the electricity isn't reliable, there will be chunks of time when you can't operate the pump. This is extremely problem- atic because some children are too weak to suckle." Hand-expressing is not efficient and formula is not sustainable— especially if it requires access to clean water. Through canisters and cycles of negative pressure, Sherman and Juzswik created an ingenious and comfortable solution. Sherman took the prototype to Malawi where she received valuable feedback about the design. Although this trip was focused on neonatal hypothermia and the reliability and function of oxygen concentrators, the interns brought along a handful of additional prototypes, among them a temperature monitor for kangaroo care, a heating sleeve for the CPAP system and a pneumatic compression device. In addition to working with nurses and doctors at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital on employing new technology, members of the team also partnered with engineers and students at The Polytechnic, part of the University of Malawi, to focus on sustaining the technology. On June 29, the Rice team attended the dedication ceremony for the Gogo Chatinkha maternity wing. The new expansion was made possible by fundraising efforts at Rice 360° and a generous gift from the program's co- directors, Oden and Rice bioengineer Rebecca Richards-Kortum. The two women donated $100,000 in personal prize money from winning the 2013 Lemelson-MIT Award for Global Innovation. "We couldn't imagine a better use for the money," said Richards-Kortum, Rice's Malcolm Gillis University Professor and recent winner of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. "Already our student-created technolo- gies are saving the lives of newborns at Chatinkha. We are excited to continue working together with local clinicians and teams of students from Rice and the University of Malawi to create more helpful technologies." The fundraising campaign, dubbed the Day One Project ("make day one of a baby's life a day of celebration and survival"), didn't end with the expan- sion. Oden and Richards-Kortum are working with students on an ambitious project to develop a suite of 17 technolo- gies designed specifically for low- resource settings. It will be a "Nursery of the Future" and, according to Oden, it could prevent more than 80 percent of all newborn deaths. "Ninety percent of the world gets their health care in places where access to health technology is limited, so we need to figure out ways of providing the best possible health care in that envi- ronment," Oden said. "We believe that we can create a low-cost but effective suite of technologies to support essen- tial newborn care at district hospitals in resource-limited settings." Already, one of the OEDK's projects, the low-cost Pumani bubble CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine, is in use at all central and district hospitals in Malawi. The device, which was initially prototyped using a Nalgene water bottle and a shoe box, delivers pressurized air to a newborn's lungs to treat respiratory distress syn- drome—a leading cause of death among infants. It is as effective as traditional CPAP machines and, according to Oden, was shown to improve survival of babies with respiratory distress syndrome from 23.5 percent to 65.5 percent in a clinical evaluation at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Malawi. Not surprisingly, the Pumani bubble CPAP has won grants from Save the Children and Saving Lives at Birth—a philanthropic partnership of multiple organizations, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is currently being rolled out in more than 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean. And just this past August, another design baked at the OEDK was one of six technologies chosen for an 18-month validation grant by Saving Lives at Birth. The AutoSyP, which will be a component of the Nursery of the Future, is a low-cost syringe pump that works to reduce maternal mortality and improve neonatal health by delivering intravenous drugs or fluids in con- trolled amounts over a period of time. In developed countries, syringe pumps are considered standard and play a crucial role in treatment plans. An alter- native like the AutoSyP, custom- designed for low-resource settings, has the potential to help millions. If their goal is to tackle the biggest issues in global health while creating a new generation of ambassadors, then Oden and Richards-Kortum are right on track. Their reach has already extended to multiple countries. This past summer, student interns traveled to Barretos, Brazil, to identify patient needs and establish a good working relationship for future projects. Another group of students headed to the southernmost tip of Texas to test their diabetic ulcer wound-care model in Brownsville clinics. "The opportunity for our students to tackle these problems that are really for- eign to them, to also learn about society in other places and to learn about some of the challenges in delivering health care around the world, makes them better world citizens," Oden said. Rice University students hard at work in the design kitchen. Credit: Nick de la Torre

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