By: Advika Anand

Graphics Editor

Beginning in 2024, East Africa Biodesign is a ten-month fellowship program that trains local innovators to improve health outcomes for underprivileged populations in East Africa through accessible, cost-effective innovations. This program brings together the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), the University of Rwanda, Kenyatta University, and Stanford Biodesign. Now in the third year of the program, they have had over a dozen fellows who have received training in identifying clinical needs, prototyping solutions for those needs, and thinking critically about creating a sustainable financial model to bring those solutions to patients.

Stanford Biodesign tries to create very diverse fellowship teams, so they typically have one or two medically trained members, such as medical doctors or nurses, and one or two engineers, including mechanical and biomedical engineers. The program includes participants who are between one and five years out of grad school and have completed their degrees. The mix of people with both engineering and medical backgrounds enables more effective health technology solutions.

Although they are still early in developing these innovations, this program specifically focuses on neonatal and maternal health solutions. One team of fellows focuses on a postpartum hemorrhage device that stops bleeding post-delivery of the fetus. After birth, if the bleeding doesn’t spontaneously stop, it requires surgery, so the team has come up with an innovation that can suction the blood from the uterus, stopping the bleeding without having to resort to surgery, which could lead to further complications. Although this device is still in the process of clinical testing, this low-cost solution can be easily used by somebody who does not have surgeon-level expertise, like a nurse or midwife, allowing them to stop the bleeding and save the mother’s life safely.

For the last decade, Ritu Kamal, the Director of Global Programs at Stanford Biodesign, has been teaching programs outside the United States to bring the Stanford Biodesign model to universities in other countries and to train innovators there. At East Africa Biodesign, her role is very similar: she teaches the Biodesign curriculum and mentors the startups or enterprises that fellows develop during the fellowship. As an engineer, Kamal was drawn to the field of building medical technology by “a mix of the intellectual thrill of building and solving problems and also the social impact of helping people.” 

The main goal of East Africa Biodesign is to empower innovators to bring new health solutions to their local markets. During that process, they do come up with startups and companies, but at its heart, it is a training program. Stanford ensures that they find the most talented candidates and equip them with the tools they need to apply their brilliance and ideas to create these solutions. In many ways, although inventing accessible health products is a factor, Stanford Biodesign is much more focused on investing in human potential.

(Sources: Stanford Mussallem Center for Biodesign, University of Global Health Equity)