Hi everybody! My name is Chinwe Appio-Riley and I am a new graduate. I studied Kinesiology, Engineering Design, and Global Health Technologies, and I am super excited to be here at Rice just a little bit longer by taking part in the SEED/Rice 360 internship this summer! This whole experience has been completely new to me as my background really isn’t on the bio side of things but I’m really enjoying it so far! I am a part of Team Breath Easy aka Breezy, along with my teammates Alvin, Alois, and Matthew. We are working to create a Bag-Valve Mask Monitor.

A BVM is an elastic bag with two one-way valves and a “mask” to fit over the patient’s nose and mouth. This is used by Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and paramedics when a person is severely injured or sick that they have lost the ability to breathe on their own and is often used in emergency situations on-site. It is the simplest way to help a person in severe respiratory distress. It is not as good as the care you can get in an ICU, but it can save your life.

The problem is that it is possible to squeeze too hard and deliver too much air and damage the patient’s lungs. This is especially true if the EMT is highly stressed (which is common), or has pressed an untrained volunteer into service to help other, even more badly wounded, patients. Based on its work with flow sensors for emergency pandemic response ventilators, Public Invention had a simple idea: use a flow sensor to measure how much air is delivered and give guidance to the user. The idea is to have a machine that assists, either visually and/or auditorily, with the frequency and volume of pumping.

An ENGI 120 group has been able to produce a mid-fidelity prototype that we are iterating on. We need to make the device more portable, durable, and easy to use. I am specifically involved in the easy-to-use portion of the device due to my background in human-centered design and understanding of the human body. I am excited to implement what I’ve learned about Human Factors which is a scientific process to reduce human error, increase productivity, and enhance safety and comfort with a specific focus on the interaction between a human and the thing of interest.

This past week, we have reviewed the beginning part of the engineering design process of contextualizing the problem and developing ideas for solutions. Additionally, we have engaged in workshops to aid in team dynamics and communication. I have found several of these exercises extremely useful and have put me in a reflective mindset to check my interactions with my teammates. I find that often I struggle to actively listen in lengthy and rambling dialogues and lectures. Often I want the discussion to get the point which results in me getting inpatient. Thus, my listening drops off. What I do to combat this is to keep an objective to try and understand what the individual is trying to say in order to rephrase back to them to make sure that we are on the same page. This keeps me more engaged and keeps the discussion more productive.

Another tool in keeping meetings on track that I am working to refine is the wonderful meeting agenda. We had a wonderful presentation from the RCEL team to review how to structure and organize team and client meetings. I used meeting agenda’s all the time in my capstone project during the school semester. Therefore, I am well acquainted with this concept, however, what was new was the idea to predict and take into account how long each objective will and should take to discuss. This way you can project how long a meeting might take in total.

Up next, the team and I are excited to engage in user interviews and finish creating design criteria and screening ideas so that we can jump into the prototyping phase.