Project: Increasing Efficiency of Immunization Delivery

Student Team Members: Livi Erickson, Peter Beegle, Adam Hendrix, and Jonathan Ballands

More than 30 million children in India lack immunization, either because vaccines are unavailable, or because health care services are poorly provided and inaccessible. One of the largest medical problems in developing countries is the lack of a standardized system; that is, there is not a comprehensive system that keeps vaccination records easily accessible for health care workers. The immunization efficiency can be improved by easing the entry and retireval of immunization record by health care workers thereby keeping their caregivers involved with the process without putting unnecessary responsibility upon them. Because of the prevalence of mobile phone devices in India, our approach is to develop a centralized database that stores the individual immunization records for children as they are vaccinated. Health care workers will be able to access this database via an application on a mobile smart phone and easily view, edit, and add entries quickly. Ideally, every child will have a personalized identification code that is kept on their person, and when they need a vaccination, the health care worker will be able to use his or her cell phone to scan the code and view that child’s record. By improving the overall vaccination system by standardizing the process, parents will be able to easily take their children to get vaccinated despite not having hard copies of all previous immunization records, and the efficiency improvement in the database system will help streamline the entire process. This has the potential to increase the number of lives saved by vaccinations from 3 million to 6 million, annually, in India alone. To store the record QR codes can be embedded on commonly found items such as bracelets.

Project: Financial Literacy for Microfinance Self-Help Groups (SHGs)

Student Team Members: Weston Thayer, Kathryn LaPann, Martin Veldsman, and Lina Garada

We have designed a digital financial literacy system to teach compound interest to semi/illiterate women in rural India engaged in micro financing. The system will work hand in hand with the previous analogue bahikhaata to facilitate comprehensible training for Self Help Group (SHG) members. This system will be designed for the SHG facilitators, providing them with more efficient educational and engaging methods for the SHG members to learn about the intricacies of financial literacy and financial planning. The digital system includes: simulation of micro financing meetings, with both scenarios of all members present and some members absent; simulation of loan distribution; simulation of repayment and resulting compound interest gains, including what happens if all money is loaned in entirety versus the continuation of how the money is currently being loaned out; and a visual simulation of who has loans and when those loans are due. The underlying goal is for SHG members to best understand the responsibilities they are about to take on and help them understand and establish the best way for the women to maximize their savings.

Project: Prosthetic Measurement Standards for Indian Population

Student Team Members: Andrew Saunders, Diana Sullivan, and Chris Taylor

Anthropometric measurements of the foot have been studied in numerous countries around the world, but never has there been an organized collection of foot measurements obtained for the Indian population. This can pose a problem for Indian people desiring foot prosthetics that are specifically designed with their distinct features in mind. We worked with the Jaipur Foot association to develop a systematic method of measuring the foot to better cater to localized sizes and requirements. Our solution attempts to be intuitive to use, can collect data at a fast pace, and have simple mechanisms that do not require much maintenance.

Project: Bicycle Powered Charging for Mobiles

Student Team Members: Sara Fleetwood, Daniel Al-Abdrabbuh, Jase Ruggles, and Samuel Phifer

Charging for Kenya is a project working to develop a solution for charging mobile phones in rural areas of Kenya that don’t have electricity. Kenya and many other third world countries are becoming more reliant on mobile phones, however, most rural areas don’t have power, forcing the people to travel to their village in order to charge their phones. In doing so, a number of new issues immerge, which is setting Kenya back in developing as a country. This project is striving to find a cheap and efficient solution that involves minimal charge, along with a way to promote it. Charging for Kenya, will inadvertently allow developing countries to accelerate their technology growth.

Project: Solar Powered Charging Station for Mobiles

Student Team Members: Go-Eun Choi, Cary Allin, Akram Ahmed, Matt Davis

Rural Kenyans have a limited access to electricity and depend on unreliable sources to charge their cell phones. The purpose of this project is to identify and design a new system or product that will allow people to reliably charge their cell phones off the grid. We researched several different technologies for harvesting energy including: solar energy, hydroelectric energy, thermal energy, and mechanical energy. Our approach was to design a community solution that would elegantly fit into the lifestyles of those living in rural Kenya. By providing a more reliable source of charging, people in rural Kenya can more conveniently participate in an increasingly fast paced society. Our design solution is a solar-powered lockbox that uses solar panels to capture energy from the sun and translate it into energy that can be used to charge a cell phone.