In a whirlwind of activity, my team and I have been preparing for our internship in Ethiopia.  While in Ethiopia, Matt, Emily A, Melody and I will have three main goals: create a medical device inventory for hospitals and clinics, demonstrate some BTB technologies, and identify engineering problems that BTB and Rice University student engineers could work on.

The medical device inventory is a small part of an initiative between Rice University Texas Children’s Hospital, Tegbare id technical college, and Jimma University.  Ethiopia has a great need of biomedical technicians and bioengineers.  Rice and TCH are working with Tegbare-id and Jimma to help improve and expand their biomedical technician and biomedical engineering programs.  Creating an inventory is one of the first steps for Rice and TCH need to do to understand the needs of Tegbare id and Jimma.  The inventory will also help the hospitals and clinics to better manage their medical equipment.

In order to create an effective medical device inventory, we met with Samantha Jacques, the director of the biomedical engineering department at TCH.  She guided us through TCH and its biomedical engineering department.  She gave us some idea of what we should expect in Ethiopian hospitals.  Also she showed us how the medical devices were tracked and managed within TCH.  We also visited Medical Bridges, an organization that collects, repairs, and donates medical supplies and equipment to emerging countries.  Furthermore, we met with Sunny Sharma from Sunbelt Medical Corp.  Sunny has worked with other low resource countries to improve their biotech programs.  So it was really good to pick his brain.