(D-127) Changing the landscape of global health with Engineering World Health

Introduction:: Engineers need to meaningfully engage in global health by developing solutions that work in the low-resource environments that are a reality for many health-care professionals and patients around the world. Engineering World Health, founded in 2001, aims to inspire, educate and empower the biomedical engineering community to improve health-care delivery around the world.



According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 1.8 billion people, or 24% of the world’s population, live in fragile contexts that are challenged in delivering quality essential health services. The disparity in health-care service is partly owed to the lack of adequate medical equipment that is essential to diagnosing diseases, sterilizing tools and performing surgery. Unfortunately, potentially lifesaving equipment is often in an unusable state and needs repairs, additional parts or even power cords. In addition to voltage and power supply issues, a lack of access to consumables or a lack of instruction manuals can render donated medical equipment unusable. If usable, donated equipment eventually falls out of service, and is then discarded or stored. As you read this, millions of pieces of donated critical medical equipment, including oxygen concentrators, infant incubators and patient monitors, are lying abandoned in hospital ‘graveyards’ in low- and middle-income regions.



Engineering World Health (EWH) was founded in 2001 by Dr. Robert Malkin and Dr. Mohammed Kiani to improve the health-care infrastructure of clinics and hospitals around the world.


Materials and Methods:: EWH participants receive intensive hands-on technical and language training before serving as volunteer biomedical equipment technicians at hospitals in their host regions. They collaborate with local hospital staff to repair medical equipment and strengthen the health-care technology situation of the facility, improving their ability to provide quality care to patients in need. On average, participants are able to repair 75% of broken equipment, leaving hospitals with dozens of repaired machines worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and thus, a tangible benefit to the hospital. Moreover, EWH volunteers provide translated instruction manuals, training guides and spare parts.



In 2022, after a pause on in-person due to the COVID-19 pandemic, EWH successfully concluded its first Summer Institutes in two years with a renewed commitment to increasing local capacity through the inclusion of host-country students in our training programs. Fifteen of the forty students who participated in our open enrollment programs in Guatemala and Rwanda were local students pursuing STEM degrees.


Results, Conclusions, and Discussions:: Since 2004, over 1,200 volunteers have made over 13,000 equipment repairs in low-resource hospitals; the value of their work and repairs is estimated to be worth over US $26 million. Importantly, participants often leave this experience with a changed mindset on how to approach engineering.



Summer EWH participants often find that they are challenged in unexpected ways; working with few resources at their disposal forces them to be creative and truly think outside the box to solve real-word problems. These problem-solving skills will ultimately make them better engineers in their future careers in research and development or manufacturing.



In reality, most engineering students do not end up working in global health directly, and do not see global health as a viable career path, but instead, often turn towards higher-paying opportunities in corporate, tech and industrial sectors. However, engineers, no matter the role, have a part to play in improving health-care delivery around the world. Engineers can make a real impact on global health by considering challenges posed in low-resource settings in their designs and by striving for greater accessibility. How many power surges can your design handle before failing? Will it hold up outside of a sterile, temperature-controlled operating room? Does it have too many parts that need frequent replacing making it unusable if these parts cannot be imported? We must begin to design with the whole world in mind, developing solutions that work in challenging environments.



Investing in the next generation of engineers and health-care professionals is more important than ever as the world faces unprecedented global health challenges. By encouraging more students to pursue global health, by making engineering experiences abroad more accessible to more students, and by inspiring students and young engineers to think outside the box and use their skills for good, we can make strides in improving health-care delivery across the globe.


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