Recently, some Makerere University Engineering students designed a medicine-delivery and patient monitoring device aimed at safeguarding medical workers against contraction of the fatal Covid-19.
These celebrated students from the College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology (CEDAT), in partnership with the College of Health Sciences, believe that the device minimizes physical interaction between patients and health workers and in the process, it enhances safety of medical personnel.
The team, led by a one Brian Ebiau, a fourth year student of Electrical Engineering, emphasized that in inventing the device, they were largely targeting quarantine and isolation centres.
According to Betty Mirembe, a fourth year student of telecommunications engineering and a member of the team, the device can also be used for home-care to minimize physical interaction between the patient and the person taking care of them, considering the fact that they are overexposed.
“We want to develop a system which mixes the two; Timely medicine delivery, while relaying the patient symptom data to the medical personnel. We designed a circuit and a system software and integrated the two to come up with a prototype that is functional,” Mirembe noted.
In an interview, Betty Mirembe further observed that Health workers are among the highest groups at risk of infection and that there is accordingly, need to minimize physical engagements between them and the patients.
In her speech during the Virtual Higher Education Partnerships for Sub-Saharan Africa (HEPSSA) project workshop organized by CEDAT, Mirembe emphasized that Uganda has registered an increasing number of infections, which has resultantly created an urgent need to respond, alive to the rise in the deaths of health workers.
“Deaths among health workers are attributed to inadequate personal protective equipment since they are frequently engaged with patients. These being frontliners, there is need to make sure that they are actually safe and we can minimize this by using the device,” she added.
Mirembe ultimately explained that the device can also be customized and changed in programming, depending on the disease, saying that even when a cure for COVID-19 is discovered, the device can still be used.
Campus Bee learnt that the device was innovated under a two-year HEPSSA project funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering of United Kingdom at a £ 200,000 (sh98m) budget. The principal of CEDAT, Prof. Henry Alinaitwe, said that the HEPSSA project is being implemented in partnership with the University of Dar es Salaam, Moi University and Leeds University, among other partners.
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