In a laboratory at the Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (Mubas), ideas are translated into project sketches on paper.
Next, the pitched innovations are debated, redesigned, tested and sometimes discarded before taking shape as prototypes with potential to supplement the country’s health care resources, one day.
For eight weeks, engineering and health sciences students took a break from routine lectures and examinations to tackle real-world health challenges.
The lab became a design studio where innovation was measured by the potential to save lives.
Such was life at this year’s Global Health Design Internship Programme hosted by Mubas in collaboration with Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies in Houston, Texas.
For the first time, students from Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (Kuhes), supported by Sihi Malawi, joined the engineering-led innovation process because solving healthcare challenges demands collaboration between those who understand how health systems function and those who can build technologies to strengthen them.
Before joining the eight-week programme, Kuhes fourth-year pharmacy student Getrude Banda never imagined that designing a healthcare solution would require listening to diverse voices.
“Working alongside engineering students, health sciences students and international mentors taught me that the best innovations come from collaboration, not from working alone,” she says.
From brainstorming ideas to building and testing prototypes, every challenge pushed Banda and her team to think harder about the country’s underfunded yet overwhelmed healthcare.
“This experience has given me practical skills, confidence and the belief that young innovators in Malawi can create solutions that make a real difference in people’s lives” she states.
From June 8 to July 27 this year, the internship brought together a fresh graduate from Rice University, two fourth-year students from Mubas and two finalists from Kuhes. They worked alongside mentors with diverse global health expertise to co-create technologies designed specifically for low-resource settings.
Rather than beginning with expensive equipment in sophisticated laboratories, the programme started with understanding people and the prevailing challenges to design innovations that respond to practical healthcare needs.
Professor Don Mathanga, from Kuhes, says it is high time Malawi put more effort in innovations that respond to local challenges.
“As a country we often believe that someone must come to do things for us, but with these internships the narrative has shifted where young people have taken the crucial role to find solutions to the challenges we face through innovation” he says.
By the close of the programme, the teams produced three prototype projects.
Among the innovations, the Kuhes students designed U-Scope, a digital urine dipstick reader to solve the challenge faced by healthcare workers who often have to manually match urine dipstick colours with bottle charts.
The innovation could improve the accuracy of detecting toxic substances in urine, enabling early detection of urinary tract infections, gestation diabetes and other health conditions.
Another pair developed Neowarm, an innovation to address hypothermia, especially a medical emergency that happens when a newborn’s body loses heat faster than it can make it.
Others conceived Mpumitsa to detect lung function, giving clinician a real-time tool that enables them to make timely referrals of patients susceptible to tuberculosis.
During the interdisciplinary learning experience, engineering students gained insight into the realities of healthcare delivery, while health sciences students contributed clinical knowledge to shape relevant innovations.
Such collaborations are increasingly important as low-income countries seek affordable, locally relevant health technologies.
By exposing students to global partnerships while keeping their focus on local challenges, the programme nurtures a generation of innovators who can think globally and design locally.
Professor Teresa Mkandawire, principal investigator for newborn essential solutions and technology (Nest 360), says: “The goal is to build capacity of our own engineers and technicians to design innovations that consider our environment, power challenges and made from local available materials and durable.
“Our innovators designed phototherapy lights which helps babies with jaundice and is in our hospitals and in Tanzania, the lights are expensive to get on the market but these lights are affordable to our hospitals.”
The prototypes mark the beginning of a longer journey from concept to implementation, but students leave the incubation sessions with experience in teamwork, solutions thinking, communication and innovation skills that extend far beyond the laboratory.
For the five interns, the eight weeks provided a glimpse into a future where young Malawians are not only identifying healthcare problems but also designing the solutions.
“It is an excellent opportunity to bring together young people from different fields and cultures to create solutions to problems that affect everyday lives,” says Professor Ann Saterbak, a biomedical engineering specialist at Duke University in association with Rice University.
