By Elisha Sanoussi (Pictured above in the Rice360 lab)
My name is Elisha Sanoussi. My hometown is in the Niger Republic in West Africa. I joined Rice360 as a Global Health Fellow after earning a Master of Engineering in Translational Medicine at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco. I also earned a Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Fellowship Project: iKMC
As a Rice360 Fellow, I am working on improving access to immediate kangaroo mother care (iKMC), a type of medical intervention where a mother or caregiver provides skin-to-skin contact to a baby shortly after birth. iKMC is a low-cost, effective solution that has been shown to provide clinical and psychological benefits for mother and baby. I am exploring simple, affordable solutions to increase the implementation of iKMC across various medical settings. As part of my research, I am exploring where medical technology can be adjusted to provide treatment and monitoring for mothers and babies while they practice iKMC. My work focuses on care across various healthcare settings, including resource-constrained settings. In addition to improving technology to adapt to iKMC, I am examining other challenges to implementing iKMC. For example, promoting iKMC in clinical settings can be complex because it requires clinicians and parents to change their approach to caring for newborns, especially those with critical and non-critical conditions. Supporting iKMC can require changes in education. Additionally, in some hospital settings, infrastructure changes may be necessary to provide adequate space and conditions for iKMC.
Project Milestones: Needs Findings
The iKMC project is a new area for the Rice360 Global Health Fellowship, emerging from work with clinicians at NEST360 and other Rice360 partnerships that highlight the clinical effectiveness of iKMC. My work thus far has included needs finding and conducting research to understand the practice of iKMC and its limitations. I have been examining literature on iKMC, reviewing interviews with parents and healthcare workers, and reviewing videos to identify the current gaps in care. This research has helped me identify potential solutions to common problems found in implementing iKMC. One project we are developing is a wire management system compatible with a mother and baby practicing iKMC. The solution would make mother and baby more comfortable while practicing iKMC and receiving treatment and monitoring.
Project Milestones: Problem Definition
One goal of my project is to develop and publish a framework for engineers, innovators, and adopters of iKMC to consider iKMC during the design process. My research is uncovering complexities in the hospital setting around practicing iKMC with mother AND baby shortly after delivery. Many medical technologies have been developed to treat mothers and babies separately and treating them within the context of iKMC adds unique challenges. This design framework would encourage the development of solutions that address the care of the mother AND baby while practicing iKMC.
Design Community: Flexibility to reexamine problems with iKMC in mind
Supporting iKMC in technology development requires examining problems from a new viewpoint. As a Rice360 fellow, I am encouraged to reexamine existing medical technology solutions with iKMC in mind.
Through my work, I am able to assist other fellows in adapting their projects to address iKMC. For example, I have helped integrate the iKMC framework into an updated design of a breathing-baby model, which provides a variety of customizable breathing patterns for benchtop testing. I find the exchange of ideas and iterating on designs with new goals in mind to be a valuable part of my fellowship experience. I have learned to value the importance of needs-finding and how ideas are iterated as new stakeholder information becomes available.
Rice360 Fellowship: How has your Rice360 Global Health Fellowship benefited you?
Working in a new area, I am defining problems and learning how valuable this step is in developing solutions. As an engineer, it can be tempting start developing a solution without fully defining a problem and fully comprehending the need being addressed through stakeholder interviews and reading existing research. Through my development of iKMC protocols, I am learning to value the patience required for ideation, the development process, and exploring needs before jumping into prototyping.