It’s already been three weeks of working in the OEDK, and it seems that time is going by very quickly.  This week we were split into teams and began working on several of the projects.

Harrison, Whitney and I began working on the APGAR device project.  Our understanding is that doctors at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Malawi see a pattern of disparity between the APGAR scores of neonates and the actual condition of the newborns.  For instance, a baby might be given an ‘8’ (a high score indicating a healthy child) by the midwives and nursing staff, but when the doctors visit, the child appears to be a ‘5’ and requires immediate care.

QECH has asked us to look into the possibility of creating a mechanical device that practitioners can use to standardize APGAR scoring and resolve this miscommunication.

We spent the week researching other APGAR technologies (including posters, charts, smartphone apps, and even supplemental scoring systems) and brainstorming the design criteria for our device.

We have lots of questions about the hospital midwives and APGAR scoring practices at QECH that will hopefully be answered soon by the Rice interns currently on-site.  These answers will allow us to make progress in our design in the coming weeks.