Hello! I’m Deepika and I’m a rising senior studying Biomedical Engineering. I am a research assistant at Tulane’s Biomedical Acoustics Laboratory and am also involved on campus with Jazbaa Bollywood Dance Team, Tulane International Scholars, and the International Student Advisory Board. This summer, I will be participating in Engineering World Health’s Summer Institute in the Dominican Republic.
Engineering World Health is a non-profit that focuses on improving the technological infrastructure of hospitals in the developing world. Summer Institute participants work in partner hospitals to fix broken and unused medical equipment. Working in small teams using creativity and ingenuity, students learn about making repairs and improvements with very limited resources. An important part of the experience is empowering local staff, a lot of whom are women, by training them to use and maintain equipment, tying in with NCI’s mission.
I am beyond excited to arrive at Santiago de los Caballeros and begin learning about the healthcare industry and medical instrumentation in the country through firsthand experience. My learning objectives for my internship are as follows:
- Identify the most important women’s health issues in the Dominican Republic by talking to medical professionals and locals I meet
- Learn about medical instrumentation in the developing world and its differences to the healthcare technology we see in the United States during training and by observation
- Repair non-functional equipment in the hospital and take inventories
- Identify gaps where biomedical innovation can improve hospital function
- Choose a need that fits with identified women’s health issue and develop a medical device idea that could be a solution
To prepare for the internship, I completed several course modules online about electronics, hospital equipment in the developing world, instrument donation practices, and much more. I learned a lot of the information I need to know to carry out my tasks and will be taught more on site. In addition, I am brushing up on my Spanish and trying to read up on Dominican culture so that I can better understand the people I meet there.
I’ve always been interested in different countries, having grown up in Japan and India and studying abroad in Scotland. This internship allows me to combine this passion with the skills and knowledge I have gained through Tulane’s Biomedical Engineering curriculum, and that is what excites me the most about this journey. I hope that the experiences and connections I make give me an insight into the global medical innovation industry even beyond the summer.