Course Meeting Times

First half of semester

• Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1 hour / session
• Labs: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session

Spring break

• Field trip to Nicaragua

Second half of semester

• Occasional lectures and local field trips during class time
• Project work: meeting times determined by teams

Course Goals

• Learn about the distinctive medical challenges of the developing world
• Learn to identify medical improvisations in the field
• Learn hands-on prototyping and medical device design skills
• Learn how to address safety, regulatory, and ethical challenges in device design

Course Structure

The semester is divided into two halves. The first half of the semester will focus on a survey of global health challenges and accelerated training on 5 different medical device categories:

1. Drug delivery
2. Vital Signs Monitoring
3. Instrumentation
4. Diagnostics
5. Lab-on-a-chip technologies
6. Mobile medical informatics

Each device category will be taught during a 2-hour lab on Fridays in addition to a lab design assignment that will be turned in by the following Friday.

In between the first half and second half of the semester, during Spring Break, a number of students will travel to Nicaragua to learn, observe, and report on specific public health challenges that can be addressed by medical technology. Upon returning from Nicaragua, students will form teams that will embark on a device design project aided by mentors and course instructors.

The second half of the semester will focus on project design development. It leverage your lessons from device design in the first half of the semester with the field experience of the Nicaraguan trip, to produce a sustainable device design. A final design poster session and initial prototypes will be displayed at the MIT Musuem at the conclusion of the semester.

Innovations in International Health

D-Lab Health is the MIT-based educational component for International Innovations in Health (IIH). D-Lab Health student projects enjoy the support of IIH partner organizations around the world. The lead geographic site for D-Lab Health 2009 is the IIH Managua H-Lab. It is comprised of a cluster of health care institutions in Managua, Nicaragua.

D-Lab Health projects that show promise may be picked up for continued nurturing by IIH for continuing development with the students. In the event that a former D-Lab Health student opts to not continue the project, IIH has a continuity plan in place to ensure the success of the technology.

Course Text

Hilts, Philip J. Rx for Survival: Why We Must Rise to the Global Health Challenge. New York, NY: Penguin, 2007 (reprint). ISBN: 9780143037989.

This book with be supplemented by individual papers and other resources, listed on the Lectures and Readings page.

Grading

Calendar

Instructors key

[JGM] = Jose Gomez-Marquez
[AS] = Amit Srivastava
[BT] = Brian Tracey