Published November 18, 2008, last updated on June 3, 2020 under Research News
The first slide Rebecca Richards-Kortum showed on November 6 was emblematic of how not to use technology to solve global health problems. The photo, taken in Swaziland, showed a large piece of broken medical equipment blocking off an out of service elevator in the hospital. Richards-Kortum, director of Rice 360˚: Technology Solutions for World Health, and former chair of the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University, was the first speaker at a two-day conference on Bioengineering Applications to Address Global Health, co-sponsored by the Pratt School’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Duke Global Health Institute. Richards-Kortum’s first image graphically captured one of the themes of the conference – that we cannot simply transplant technologies from the developed world to the developing world. The lack of resources, lack of infrastructure, and lack of trained technicians in the developing world requires innovative responses from biomedical engineers. More than 100 students and faculty from 40 universities attended this conference. They had the opportunity to listen to experts from several countries discuss technology challenges and novel solutions in diagnostics, drug delivery, and developing business models for new technology. The conference also included poster presentations on current projects. Several speakers challenged common assumptions. Robert Malkin, director of the Duke-Engineering World Health (EWH) chapter, challenged the notion of donating equipment. “In many of the hospitals that our students go to, 80 percent of the equipment is donated,” he said. “But does that help? It is hard to get a good number, but most people looking at the issue say that somewhere between 50-80 percent of donated equipment doesn’t work.” Malkin shared data from an analysis of nearly 3000 pieces of failed technology that EWH students had found in the hospitals they visited. The most common reason was lack of consumables – because of either cost or availability. A second issue was donated equipment that hospitals could not use because of lack of training. “So is it better to develop new technology? Or to build capacity in the local hospitals so that they can handle their own equipment?” he asked. [Read the Duke Research Blog about Malkin’s presentation.]