Laundry Day!
Steve, Rachel, Samir, and Gill giving each other backrubs after a stressful day.
Everyone woke up this morning early and it was raining outside. The decision was made to stay at the Ivory Resort rather than walk to CYEC. We started out with a small brief meeting where we talked about what we will be doing for the rest of stay in Kenya and who is in charge of upcoming events. Alice L, Gill, and Tom worked on getting logistics ready for the clinic at the CYEC on Wednesday. The people who will be running through the clinic on that day will be students from the Kenya Methodist University. All of these students will be very fluent in English.
Carey, Alice C, and Brianna will be in charge of arranging the logistics for the clinic on Saturday where more university students will be “Mashavu’ed”. After some initial talking with Andrew, we found that 30 to 100 people will be coming to the clinic on Wednesday. Ideally we would like at least 50 people. We will leave at 6:45 AM on Wedsnesday and the clinic will start at 8:00 AM. Before the clinic starts the CYEC students and the kiosk operators will be taught how to use the additional instruments that will be added to the kiosk and we will set up chairs, tables, and power cords for all of our computers.
The biggest difference between Wednesday’s clinic and last Saturday’s clinic is that we will give the patients a full Mashavu experience by including a response kiosk. This kiosk will show the patients the doctor’s response. The patient will first give consent in line to go through the Mashavu system. Patients will then one at a time enter a room and go to one of two kiosks with two computers at each. The first computer at each kiosk will utilize the biomedical devices to measure patient’s vitals. There must be a separate computer in the room that will connect to the commercial pulse oximeter and the reason behind this is that it uses a different program and we only have one of the instruments. The commercial devices will also be used to take actual measurements and these numbers will be written down on a piece of paper.
Next they will move to the other end of the kiosk where their social and medical history will be recorded. Their vitals will also be recorded in LabView and all this information is sent to the doctors from this computer. At this point the patient will move to one of two places: an interview or a focus group. The interview is ten minutes long and ask ten questions about their experience at the kiosk. The focus group asks middle age women about social issues in Kenya. When the pateints are done with their interview or focus group, they will go to another kiosk where they will be shown the response from the doctor via an internet connection. If they doctor responds that they need to see a doctor, then they will go to a clinic at CYEC where they will be seen by Carol or Ross. If the doctor responds that they are completely healthy, then they will have completed the Mashavu experience. If a line forms at any point during the day, the students will be shown educational materials. Since they are highly educated, we’ll ask them how to improve upon the materials.
Tom, Alice L, Alice C, Carey, Shengnan, and Gill went to CYEC around noon to confirm this information about the clinics on Wednesday and Saturday. They also ate lunch there and walked back in the afternoon, where everyone else had a laundry party (there’s a whole lot of clotheslines and cleaned clothes around the Ivory Resort right now!) and relaxed after all the stress from the past few days. All the surveys were typed up and saved to computers today – healthcare surveys had 50 people and fun surveys have 50 people. Systemic Assessment outline the paper on the assessment methodology today as well.
Alice C improved upon the appearance of her under the arm thermometer by inserting the thermistor into a pen casing. Bello worked on the spirometer to make sure that contamination of the device doesn’t occur. He decided to use a cardboard mouthpiece and a one way valve to fix this problem. The spirometer programming will be worked on tonight to get it prepared to work tomorrow. There are no commercial thermometers to compare the bioe thermometer to, but it will still be used tomorrow. Improvement were not made upon the weighing scale so that will not be used tomorrow. The stethoscopes are also not ready to be used tomorrow either, so they will not be used.
Jeff and Samir are going to Nairobi this evening in preparation for next week’s clinic. Julie, Steve, Colin, Dr. Butler, Brianna, Ross Reife, and Carol Reife went to go run a demo of the Mashavu system at a hospital. Julie, Steve, Colin, and Roma worked in the morning to get the devices ready for the demo. The pulse function of the pulse oximeter and the temperature intruments were working previously, but they found out this morning that they were not working properly. The blood pressure cuff was the only instrument that worked for the demo.
The demo started at Providential General Hospital and met with the doctors and nurses there. There was a question and answer session about the feasibility of the Mashavu system, and then the demonstration was performed. Overall they thought it was a good idea but they wanted to see the full Mashavu system. Their biggest concern is that the novelty of the system will wear off after time. They then showed the Mashavu demo at the second location, Outspan hospital and then a focus group with the doctors and nurses there was conducted as well. The second hospital thought the system might work will in the triage section of a hospital, and also stated they wanted to see the entire system. Overall the Mashavu system showed promising interest from the hospitals.
