The SolarSPELL for BMETs library kicked off its first training in Rwanda on June 8th with Engineering World Health Summer Institute participants. These students receive one month of intensive language, technical training and practical work, and then are placed in hospitals throughout Rwanda to help local biomedical engineering technicians fix medical equipment. The SolarSPELL offers a unique way to deliver many technical and service resources to these hospitals to better empower the technicians to repair these life-saving pieces of equipment.
The 18 students will be placed in 9 hospitals in Rwanda. The training was led by the two SolarSPELL health interns Audrey Mutoni and Adhel Geng.
Audrey, Rwanda, leading the students in the hardware of SolarSPELL.
Adhel, South Sudan, showing the instructor of the Engineering World Health class, Dr. Michael Moreno from Texas A&M how SolarSPELL works.
The training started with an overview of the hardware and then an in-depth look at the content that they could find on the SPELL.
Following this was a scavenger hunt, where the winners received some nice prizes.
Because these students will be the ones implementing the libraries into their hospitals, a large amount of time was spent brainstorming means of implementation as well as challenges they would face. As a group, we brainstormed ways to overcome challenges of implementation and best practices to effectively introduce this technology into the hospitals.
Finally, the students got to practice using the SolarSPELLs and see what the SPELLs do as they charge in the sun.
It was a great training and we look forward to seeing how the implementation goes in the hospital next month.
