What started as a few senior design projects less than a decade ago has turned into a global health initiative that is a finalist for the $100 million MacArthur Fellowship.

Located next to one of the most concentrated hubs of medical science, research and technology in the world, Rice University’s NEST360˚ project is an extension of the school’s Rice 360˚ Institute for Global Health. The project focuses on newborn medical technology, the implementation of those devices and education post-implementation in developing countries.

Serena Agrawal, a junior at Rice University, held an internship with Rice 360 this summer. While the institute offers multiple locations across the globe for the internship, Agrawal chose to go to Malawi. With one of the highest maternal death and infant mortality rates in the world, according to a UNICEF study, the East African country was a fitting base location for NEST360˚, she said.

“I want to design medical devices, and that’s mostly motivated by my love of engineering and design, but I want to help people,” Agrawal said. “I know that sounds cliché, but I wanted to be a doctor when I was little because I want to save people.”

Working alongside Rice, University of Pennsylvania, international and local students and faculty, Agrawal spent most of her time at The Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital. During her two months in Malawi, she developed low-resource technology and identified key issues with management and the allocation of resources.

One of her main projects was to address and find a solution for the insufficient equipment used to cure newborns of jaundice, a disease that if can lead to brain damage if not treated properly. Local hospitals in Malawi were using makeshift LED lighting that could easily harm newborns, Agrawal said.

“I was working on the bili lights, which treats babies with jaundice,” she said. “We were working on ways to refine the light, make it lighter and work better generally and also build a stand for it.”

While touring different clinics in the area, Agrawal noticed the number of unused medical devices. Most of the clinics had what are called “technology graveyards” — rooms that carry dozens, if not hundreds, of broken or worn-out medical devices that were donated from other universities.

Although many hospitals had medical technicians handy to fix broken devices, many models were donated, so not every tool was fixable, Agrawal said. Even if the technician knew how to fix them, the resources weren’t available to the area.

Along with adaptable low-resource technology, Agrawal said that in terms of the long-term, big-picture scope, “awareness and education” will be the answer to developing technology.

“Yeah, you have health care, and yeah, you have the devices, but one you need the education beforehand, and then you need the education post-implementation of the devices,” Agrawal said. “It’s a lot more human interaction. As an engineer, the stereotype is that we hole up in our little studio and go for it, but you need the communication aspect and the human aspect, too.”

When asked how she responds to critics citing “voluntourism” for American projects like these, Agrawal first brought up the depth of the project. She went on to explain that NEST360˚ is rooted in science and technology and is meant to have a widespread impact. Agrawal was not hesitant to point out that hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved both directly and indirectly by the technology.

“It’s an established program that does a lot of things, so for one you’ve got education on Rice’s side,” Agrawal said. “But then you’re also partnering with people in Malawi, so the nurses, doctors, students and the professors in those universities are learning, too. It’s a multifaceted program that goes beyond just staying there for two weeks.”

Published on September 26, 2017 at 8:04 am

Contact Lydia: lnilesst@syr.edu