3/29 Lamp Update

Today's meeting was just a planning meeting. Next week we will begin work on the second lamp head.

Assignments for the week:
Steve: buy metal strips, a switch, and sticky squares
Elliot: buy cell phone batteries
Melissa: pick out LEDs
Liz: Talk to BlueLab about the generator (probably by emailing the officers)
Dan: Talk to CGH about people to interview about the lamp, talk to Aileen (aileenhs@umich.edu) about getting into contact with Frank Andersen and other MDs.

Here's a tentative schedule for the next two months:
4/5: Start working on lamp head #2, wire up the cell phone batteries
4/12: Finish lamp head #2
4/19: Finals, probably no meeting
4/26: Make contact with UM surgeons to give us feedback on the lamp, work on getting the lamp to run off wall power
5/3: Finish getting the lamp to run off wall power
5/10: Internal testing
5/17: External testing with UM surgeons
5/24: Make modifications as recommended by the surgeons
Early June: send lamp to Nicaragua

Here's two links to the surgical lamp that won the Australian design award:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s3158339.htm
http://student.designawards.com.au/application_detail.jsp?status=3&applicationID=9657


Because I forgot to send them out last week, here are the interview questions:
1. Have you seen a need for improved surgical lighting?
2. Is the need sporadic or constant? What is the cause of the need? If sporatic, how long and how often?
3. Where does surgical lighting rank in the list of priorities?
4. How much do you think clinics/hospitals would be willing to spend on a grid-independent surgical lamp?
5. Have you witnessed a surgery that had to be stopped due to inadequate surgical lighting? What was the result?
6. What manufacturing capabilities are available?
7. What batteries are locally available? LEDs? Used bike parks? Cost?
8. How often does the power go out for? For how long?
9. What are the most common procedures requiring surgical lamps? Where are they performed?
10. Do you see the lamp being used for anything other than surgery?
11. What is currently being used for surgical lighting? What about during blackouts? How well does this work?
12. Do you think a grid-independent surgical lamp would be a cost-effective way to improve the quality of care?
13. How important is portability for surgical lighting?
14. Are you interested in helped us to design/implement a surgical lamp?
15. What other equipment/supplies are needed for surgical lamps to be useful? Anesthesia? Disposables?
16. Do you have any questions or comments? Are there any questions that you think we should have asked that we didn’t?

Some Lit Search Findings

I worked on a lit search regarding the availability and quality of surgical lighting, and while I didn't find any studies explicitly reporting the information we were looking for, I did find some interesting papers. I'm including the name and some of the important information from them; they're all available from google scholar or through the university.

Quantifying Surgical and Anesthetic Availability at Primary Health Facilities in Mongolia
David A. Spiegel • Shelly Choo • Meena Cherian •Sergelen Orgoi • Beat Kehrer • Raymond R. Price •Salik Govind

Not much info, but in the table towards end 11% reported to have access to lighting, eg flashlight, surgical, etc

A protocol for safe anasthesia for cleft lip and palate surgery in developing countries
S. C. Hodges, A. M. Hodges

"The majority of hospitals in Uganda are severely underfunded and understaffed. Reliable electricity is unusual. In some centres there is no running water and the majority of hospitals have no oxygen. Many of the operating theatres are small and cramped with poor lighting and no recovery room"

Quantifying surgical capacity in Sierra Leone: a guide for improving surgical care
T. Peter Kingham, MD; Thaim B. Kamara, MD; Meena N. Cherian, MD; Richard A. Gosselin, MD; Meghan Simkins, BA; Chris Meissner, BA; Lynda Foray-Rahall, MD; Kisito S. Daoh, MD; Soccoh A. Kabia, MD; Adam L. Kushner, MD, MPH

-info on availibility and periodicity of electricity

-"Even when electricity was available, lighting was
a problem, given there were approximately 6 individual lightbulbs that worked in all of the dome lights throughout Sierra Leone. Most operating rooms subsisted with a portable light or sunlight."

-hospitals in the capital have been receiving electrical power at an increasingly steady rate

-"The 5 other hospitals surveyed depended on generator power, but owing to the scarcity and cost of fuel, patients’ families were sometimes required to provide the necessary fuel to power generators during surgical procedures."

-"In addition, basic infrastructure, such as lighting in the operating room, is an example of a small investment that can have an enormous effect. The lightbulbs required in Sierra Leone, for example, were found to cost less than US $0.50 at a factory in China."

Lamp Head/Thesis Review

Hey guys,

Below is a picture of our next-prototype lamp head, in case you didn't get a chance to see it:

Also, I looked over Abigail's thesis for background information and this is what I found:

She visited 3 regional hospitals and ten health clinics in Ghana/Uganda, and from these trips claims that "due to the unreliability of electrical energy there have been cases of deaths in surgery and delivery wards.” She then shares several anecdotes concerning complications caused by surgical lighting failure during power outages, but has no numbers or data to show how often this is actually happening.

She also claims that the electrification rate (percent of population that has electricity) in Uganda is 10%, and states that this is similar to most low HDI countries, where electrification rates range from 2-50%, with reliability at or below 50%.

This graph below was also contained in her thesis. I am unsure of its source, but it shows how often power outages occur in Uganda, and could definitely be helpful when we are looking for more quantitative data to prove our cause.

-Melissa

NCIIA Grant Application

Here's the last NCIIA grant application we sent in, just in case you ever want to use it as a reference.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~stvdwtt/NCIIA_Grant_Application.pdf

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~stvdwtt/marketing_schematic.pdf

Lamp Update 3/15

Hey guys,
First Jack and Melissa gave some quick updates on research they've found relating to surgical lighting in developing countries. This info should be up on the blog soon. Next, we a look at the light the lamp head puts out. From a completely unprofessional viewpoint it seems to be bright enough and was able to (dimly) light up an entire LBME classroom. Next, Elliot and Mike went to the Wilson Center to attach the lamp head to the lamp frame with a pair of L-brackets. The process ended up being more difficult than anticipated, so we'll finish that up next week. Liz, Melissa, and I made a list of new survey questions (included at the bottom of this email) which have been sent to the survey team. Next, we talked about the poster and changed the categories to Background, Lamp Design, Implementation, and Future Work.

Registration for the global health symposium is due on Monday, March 21st, don't forget to register if you plan on going.

Tasks for the Week:
Steve: Find out when M-HEAL is going to WMR next, write the Future Work part of the poster
Melissa: Post lamp need info, write the Implementation part of the poster, talk to Mike Lee about when Wilson Center trainings will be
Liz: Write Lamp Design part of the poster
Jack: Post lamp need info, write the Background part of the poster
Elliot: Compile the poster over the weekend
Pat: Write the abstract for the poster
Mike: Begin work on a CAD drawing of the lamp

Please send your portion of the poster to Elliot by 7pm on Friday. Elliot, send the compiled poster to the group by Sunday at 7pm for feedback.

Let me know if you have any comments or questions or if I forgot to include something.

Best,
Steve

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Survey Questions:
1). Describe what you use for surgical lighting. What procedures do you use it for?
2). In these case of a power outage, what surgical lighting do you use?
3). What have been the complications due to inadequate surgical lighting (including doe to power outages)? How frequent are these complications?
4). How much would you be willing to spend on a surgical lamp that continues to work during power outages? $___________
5). How high of a priority is surgical lighting that continues to work during power outages in terms of equipment needs?
__ Top 3
__ Top 5
__ Top 10
__ Higher than 10th

Ugandan Technical Schools/ Lamp pictures

Below are links to two different directories of Ugandan technical schools that I found when we were talking about possible schools to approach last meeting. They are both basically online collections of information about technical school in Uganda, including names, locations, and contact information. If we decide we want to go ahead and speak directly to schools, this would be a great resource to find potential schools to contact.

http://www.btvet-uganda.org/

http://www.ugaprivi.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=56

I also went in to LBME today and took a bunch of pictures of the lamp to be used in our flyer. Below are a few of the better shots, but if you want a copy of all of them, email me and I will send them to you!

-Melissa Learman

2/15/2011 Meeting Summary

Here's the lamp update for the week:

I. This Week's Meeting:
Yesterday we discussed our plan of action for finding a partner organization. We will update our brochure and then talk to Moses Lee for feedback on our brochure and pitch. After meeting with Moses we'll start contacting NGOs and trade schools. Our current model is to partner with trade schools and have them incorporate lamp building into their curriculum. This provides them with some additional revenue for the school and solves the sparse need problem. We found that there is a good directory of trade schools in Uganda. Pat and Liz worked on the generator and found that it generates slightly more power than expected. Liz updated us on her meeting with the EECS prof (details on the blog).

As a result of feedback during the general body meeting, we are going to try to build our lamp frame out of a single bike.

The main things that need to be fixed in the brochure are:
- mention more than just Africa as our target
- talk about technical school partnerships
- change hand-crank generator to bicycle generator

II. Action Items:
Melissa: Take pictures of the lamp with a mock head and counterweight; post Ugandan technical school directory to the blog
Mike D: Read the relevant sections of Abigail's thesis and post a summary to the blog (include technical info, location info, partner info, etc)
Dan: Update the brochure
Steve: Set up a meeting with Moses Lee
Pat: Do generator calculations
Liz: Talk to BlueLab about their bike generator
Jack: Calculate the specs we want for LEDs and look for some matching ones online

III. Abigail's Thesis:
Here's a link to Abigail's thesis: http://mirlyn.lib.umich.edu/Record/007294554.

Also, here's a link to her website (which has some relevant stuff): http://www.empowerdesign.com/

IV. Next Week:
Next week we'll be meeting at 8pm in the LBME project room. Some of the time will probably be spent in the Wilson Center putting together lamp heads.