For me, this week consisted of two main activities: preparing and giving our final presentation and testing the minimum separation between our fiber optic cables that we could detect from the light levels. We had created the slides for our presentation last Friday, so Monday they just required editing. On Monday we also all went to the pool to help test Team Swim Support’s device and it was really cool to see how far they had come. I had already tested with them once, but they had modified some straps since I last tested which made it much harder for me to wriggle down into the water.

As I was returning from the pool Monday, our client dropped off a translational micrometer for us to use in testing the minimum distance between the fiber optic pieces that we could detect. Because we would be working with such small distance, we knew it would be under two millimeters, we had to make sure every part was well secured so no accidental error affected our results. In order to attach our box to the micrometer, laser cut pegs that fit into the shape of the hooks on our boxes which we glued to a wooden platform. On the underside of that platform, we attached four pieces of dowel rod which fit into holes on the micrometer to hold it down. To hold the other box, which needed to be at the same height as the first but without having a micrometer below it, we laser cut a box which we attached pegs for the hooks to as with the first. We then glued this box onto a piece of plywood and screwed the micrometer onto the same piece of plywood.  The entire setup is below.

Once everything was dry, we were able to place our boxes with the fiber optic onto the setup and move the micrometer such that the fiber optic pieces started out touching. We then slowly moved them apart until we could read a difference in the light level, which occurred at .25mm. While creating the setup took much longer than the test itself, knowing the sensitivity of the device we made is a good piece of information to pass on to our client so that she might be able to take that into account when continuing to work on an optical tocodynamometer.

Wednesday morning we practiced our presentation and prepared the materials that we would be handing off to our client. Immediately after lunch all of the groups presented. It was great having a few extra audience members, including Dr. Oden, Dr. Leautaud, Dr. Saterbak, and my group’s client Dr. Carns. Wednesday was actually my last day as I was scooting off to get to a family wedding, so leaving Wednesday evening was bittersweet. Sweet in knowing I had learned a lot and that my group had made progress towards an optical tocodynamometer, even if it didn’t quite work out as planned, but bitter saying goodbye to the new friends I had made, especially those from Malawi and Brazil. Thank you to Rice for this amazing opportunity—I can’t imagine a better summer!

I can’t believe that it’s already my last week interning with Rice 360°! This week, I’m compiling all of my final documentation so that people can access my work in the future. I also started working on the temperature display code! Previously, the incubator displayed the baby’s temperature at a 1 Hz frequency. I’ve changed that in the Arduino code. I think that it would be more beneficial to have the temperature display more frequently when the baby’s temperature is too cold or hot, and less frequently when it’s in the normal range. Conceptually, I understood how I wanted to make this happen, but it took me some time to understand the existing code and figure out which part of the code I needed to change and how to change it. I’ve gotten the code to work and have tested it to see if this temperature display occurs at the correct frequency by manually timing how often the temperature reading changes based on what range the temperature is in.

This summer, I’ve learned a wide range of valuable skills from electronic prototyping to user interface development and usability testing. This experience has motivated me to consider pursuing the minor in Global Health Technologies and has confirmed my interest in developing medical devices. I’d like to thank the Rice 360° tech team for welcoming me into the team and supporting me throughout the internship. I’d like to thank Kelley Maynard and Mary Kate Hardy for being my mentors, supporting me, and giving me feedback on my work. Finally, I’d like to thank Dr. Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Dr. Maria Oden, Dr. Veronica Leautaud, our sponsors, and the rest of Rice 360° for making this program possible.

Team Cancer Crushers

This final week Team Cancer Crushers continued working on the final prototypes, having all the CAD files for the final prototypes sorted and already 3D printed the Normal and Normal with Cysts Cervixes with Polylactic Acid (PLA) on Friday, we then proceeded with 3D Printing of the precancerous and cancerous cervixes using a flexible filament NinjaFlex.

On Monday we managed to finish printing all the stages in the development of cancer and applied the thermochromic heat sensitive paint on the precancerous and cancerous cervixes having 3 of each painted with a thermochromic paint changing color at 90°f and 1 of each with a high temperature thermochromic paint changing at 114°f . We included the two different temperature levels for color change to suit varying conditions across countries

The final design included all the improvements suggested by our client Dr Schmeler and her Lab team on the color change duration and distribution of color changing lesions on the cervixes with the aim to increase realism of the cervixes and VIA procedure. For the color change duration, we created the precancerous and cancerous cervixes with a hollow inside of which either slightly hot water will be filled to pre heat the cervix model prior to demonstrating the swabbing with acetic acid to enhance the duration or hot water will be filled into the hollow to maintain the color change of the lesions for almost 5 minutes. The color changing lesions we created them in a way that they are distributed randomly on the cervixes , not the entire surface will change color as in the medium fidelity prototypes but only on this patches like lesions.  We also included the Squmocolumnar Junction on which the cancer cells develop and creating the color changing lesions around this junction.

High Fidelity Cervical Models

The final design comes with a Themos to maintain the temperature of the hot water to be used during  training in order to achieve the desired color change duration that comes with high water temperatures just below the boiling temperature.

On Tuesday we started testing the Ease of Use (demonstration of the VIA procedure) and the Realistic Design Criteria with the SEED interns and the TA’s of which we obtain a score of 4.32 and 4.05 respectively on a User Defined Scale of 5 with a target score of 3.0 on each test. This completed our project tasks that we had planned to completion.

Upon completing our task, we started working on the final presentation with my team mates Karen and Mary and did the presentation on Wednesday. Was nice seeing  great achievements from all the teams in their project.

On Thursday we had a client meeting with the Sonia Parra to present the final design and outline all the improvements that we implemented into the final design as suggested.

Finally, on Thursday and Friday we did documentation and clean up. We created a User Guide for the Cervical Cancer Models to be used as reference in case other teams will work on the same project and also to be used by our client in using the models.

This has been a great project, enjoyed working on it the whole time and especially being able to be successful in the project. My team members have been amazing the whole time and always focused on completing the project.

The last week of SEED truly came upon us too quickly. All of a sudden, we were giving final presentations, concluding our documentation, and boxing up our projects to be handed back to Dr. Wettergreen.

The A-Wrist-Ocrats had a very successful week, highlighted by our meeting with James Northcutt, a physical therapist at Shriners Hospital. Since this was our first meeting at the hospital, we went in with a lot of questions and also our final prototype to showcase. Mr. Northcutt helped clarify a lot of our questions and enlightened us on the context in which the device will be used. We then showcase our prototype and demonstrated its use, even having a chance to conduct a comparison test between our device and Mr. Northcutt’s goniometer reading. While we learned that our device succeeded in addressing many of the relevant issues such as ease of use, ease of setup, comfort, and durability, there was still some fine tuning required as far as the actual accuracy of the device was concerned. During testing, there was some give in the wrist attachment, which had to be adjusted for by tightening the clamp. After the adjustment, the reading was fixed and the results matched the goniometer.

Our final design can be seen in the images above and we’re very happy with the progress we’ve made this summer. This forearm rotation device is very close to finished and only needs a few improvements. Some areas of future work that we’ve identified include considering opening up the main ring for more adaptability, making it more user friendly for right/left-handedness, and securing the clamping mechanisms in order to ensure quality results.

The end of the program also brings with it the goodbyes to all the international students. I’ve had an amazing experience this summer, getting exposure to Malawian and Brazilian culture. Moreover, the friendships I’ve made over the course of seven weeks are bonds that’ll endure for a lifetime. Although it is with a heavy heart that I say farewell to all my fellow interns, I can easily say that we will meet again, sooner or later.

After fine-tuning my usability test materials, I sent a request to the Rice interns in Malawi to conduct an informal usability test at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Malawi. However, I had no idea about how strict administration in Malawi actually is. It looks like we need approval from the hospital director and maybe even IRB approval to conduct this test. I was thinking that I could get some general feedback on my UI designs, and PowerPoint slides and questions shouldn’t require IRB approval. But now, I know that I should probably confirm with admin whenever I need to ask people outside of Rice 360 for feedback on my work. Even though we may not be able to test people to see how well the UI conveys information and alerts, we may be able to show the UI design to a few health practitioners to see what they like/don’t like on the UI designs.

I think it’s really nice that the RRK lab encourages journal club during weekly meetings, and we’re starting to have journal club at our weekly tech team meetings as well. We present papers that are relevant to our projects. I also had a chance to prepare a journal club presentation for one of our weekly tech team meetings. I created a presentation on the paper “Kangaroo Mother Care: A review of mothers׳ experiences at Bwaila hospital and Zomba Central hospital (Malawi)”. In this paper, I looked to see how our neonatal temperature monitor (NTM) would be helpful in Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC). KMC is a natural way of caring for infants and consists of continuous skin-to-skin contact between the mother and baby. I didn’t get to present this because our meeting ran overtime, but planning for the presentation was a great experience! I think journal club is a great way to let everyone know what’s going on with their projects and also contribute to colleagues’ projects.

I also figured out how we can collect temperature data from a patient monitor on our computers. Our RS232 card finally arrived, but I was only able to collect SPO2 data via the Medicollector software since we haven’t received our temperature probes, yet. Furthermore, I figured out how to export the data collected to a text file, which can then be exported to Excel. From there, we can use Matlab to analyze the data by importing text/Excel files. So as soon as our temperature probe arrives, we should be able to begin the adult study to test the accuracy of our temperature probe in the IncuBaby temperature monitor.

In the beggining of the week, we spent all the Monday morning testing the final device at the Rice Rec Pool. The tests runned really well and we had the opportunity to show/test with Dr. Wettergreen. We aquired a good amount of data that was really useful for us. They pointed some improvements for the next prototype, but I’m really glad we could give him a safe, confortable and easy to use device. We worked very well together, specially doing documentation and meetings to organize all the steps/decisions in our prototypes. Was a nice iterative process.
The team in this last weeks improved a lot as a team and in our project too. After testing testing Tuesday Morning, we were really happy with our final result and specially because our client family really liked our device. In terms of Functionality, Safety and Durability.
The test with the client was a SUCCESS! I filmed with a GoPro under the water and that was really helpful to evaluate the seat mesh functionality/adjustments and general features too. We put him in the device, using a lift system, and he stayed at the pool by himself for aproximately 20 min. Was great being there at this moment to see our project working and bringing all this feelings about making something good to help somebody.

Wednesday morning, we finish working in our Final Presentation. We splitted up the topics and I got the testing/future work part. In the afternoon, we presented and did a good job. We had fun while practicing, which made a lot easier to us to remember all the topics and main points of the presentation.
Basically, Wedsneday was tha last day of “work”.I’m very happy with the group performance and Final Prototype/Solution. Also, I’m flattered for being part of this group and SEED program! Was an amazing experience, definitely one of the bests in my life.

I just want to say THANK YOU! to everybody and for the oppotunity here at the OEDK, Rice University. Hope to see you guys again!

#goteamswimsupport

#goteamSEED2016

Rafael V. Lantmann

It’s our last week here at the OEDK, as SEED is finally coming to an end. Team Toco spent most of this week doing some last testing on our fiber optic before we hand off the project to Dr. Carns. Our main goal for testing this week was determining the minimum displacement of fiber optic cable that we can reliably detect with our device. Since we know that movements on the belly during contractions are very small, it’s important we know just how sensitive our device can potentially be for any future iterations on the Optoco. For our testing, we’ve been using a translation stage provided by Dr. Carns, which is capable of moving our boxes apart very precisely. We spent Monday creating a setup for the device, screwing the translation stage into a piece of plywood and working out how to attach our 3D printed boxes to the stage. Once we had everything set up, we started testing pretty much the same way we had before we got the translation stage — we slowly moved the boxes apart until we could see the light level start to drop off. We discovered that under ideal conditions, we’re able to detect displacements as small as 0.25 mm consistently.

After finishing up testing, we worked the rest of the week on our final presentation, which we gave Wednesday afternoon. Since then, we’ve been working on winding down the project: doing cleanup and finishing documentation. The Optoco still has a ways to go before it’s finished, and we have some ideas for what could be done next, but unfortunately we’re out of time at the OEDK.

I just want to close up by saying that it’s been an incredibly fun summer working with everyone here at SEED. I’m going to miss everybody here, especially the international students as they head back home. Even though the Optoco didn’t quite get finished in the end, it’s been an amazing summer at the OEDK.

TEAM TOCO!

This is how far God has brought the seed interns #love you all # will miss y’all#

We all looked so good during our final presentations yesterday afternoon.It has been a great journey.I have learnt the different  phases through which Teams or individuals go through during project period,where you find yourself so happy or sad depending on the situation.Overall working on this project had made me so happy.

We documented all our work and cleaned up yesterday and today.I thank all the  program sponsors , Mikaela , Helen ,OEDK stuff,Dr Carns, Dr Veronika, Laila  and our fellow Malawians for everything .

a SPECIAL thank you to all my fellow seed interns ( Allie,Jeremy,Mary,Lucas,Karen, Hillary,Saad, Gigi,Rafael, Zach, Nathalie, and  Waheed ) We had a great time together

my team spelt the word TOCO in a picture we took together.This has been a greatest experience in my carrier and my personal life

go #Team toco#

below are our physical deliverables for our project;

FINAL PROTOTYPE !!!!