After a jam-packed two-day bootcamp at Rice, we embarked on our trip to Costa Rica. For two months during Costa Rica’s rainy season, we will be exploring the medical technology industry through internships, investigating needs, and brainstorming possible solutions. Costa Rica itself is a unique environment due to its large medical device industry, with companies such as Boston Scientific and Establishment Labs (where I will be interning). Additionally, we will explore the various healthcare situations that may not exist in the United States, namely the Caja Costarricense de Seguru Social (Costa Rican Social Security Fund), or Caja for short. The Caja is a public health service funded by taxes that provides low-cost healthcare to Costa Rican citizens.
We began our Costa Rican experience by visiting the innovative campus of Universidad Invenio, a collaborator. At the campus, we assembled a medical device prototype developed and improved by previous GMI cohorts called DialOasis. Many Costa Ricans, especially men who work long hours in fields without hydrating regularly, have diminished or no kidney function, necessitating dialysis treatment, including peritoneal dialysis. Dialysis, however, becomes a full-time job for these patients. They must travel long distances to a regional hospital to receive 4 dialysis treatments a day, 6 days a week. Home treatments would significantly relieve this burden, but many tico (Costa Rican) homes do not have clean floors or adequate equipment to carry out dialysis. With a port going directly into the abdomen, any contamination risks extended illness and death. In comes DialOasis. This low-cost solution to be installed by the Caja in tico homes will allow peritoneal dialysis patients to have a clean and dedicated environment to conduct peritoneal dialysis safely and smoothly.
Assembling it was an eye-opening experience into what needs to be considered in not only designing medical devices, but also implementing them. Parts can be easily misplaced, and I learned to value the simplicity of the design and possible further improvements. Visiting a regional hospital reminded me of the enormous potential this project carries. Seeing the hospital’s grounds lined with people waiting for dialysis treatments reaffirmed my motivation to develop medical devices with driven engineers, doctors, and patients to relieve the suffering of patients.
I channeled this motivation into needs finding. Coming from a biochemistry background, I don’t have much experience in investigating real-world, marketable solutions for medical problems. Thankfully, the Rice GMI professors who’ve accompanied us on the trip brought us up to speed about identifying pain points and formulating what a good outcome would be. Understanding this helped Kevin and me to prepare a presentation about encouraging handwashing among dialysis patients to reduce contamination risk. We’ll share this with Costa Rican engineering students and formulate solutions with them.
With such an eventful week, we treated ourselves to our first tico football game against Northern Ireland. I would share a video, but you wouldn’t be able to hear anything over the vuvuzelas (including mine), so this vantage will have to suffice.
