1. Open Source Biomedical Engineering
for Sustainability in African Healthcare
Combining Academic Excellence with Innovation
C. De Maria, D. Mazzei, A. Ahluwalia

2. Healthcare quality in Africa
The scarcity of accessible quality healthcare
in sub-saharian Africa:
• lack of resources
• lack of adequately trained biomedical engineers
[Mullaly, 2008]
– A lack of clear common understanding of the BME
as a field of study
– Limited or lack of human capital or resources to
teach advanced (3rd -5th year) BME courses
– Poor linkages between the medical and
engineering faculties
– Lack of medical device industry in Africa
– Over reliance on foreign companies to repair and
design instrumentation.
ACADEMIC
STRUCTURAL

3. Past Experience: ASIALINK project
• Development of Core Competencies in the areas
of Biomedical and Clinical Engineering in the
Philippines and Indonesia 2005-2008
• Long term and sustainable improvements can
only come through:
I. recognition on the part of policy makers, of the
importance of on loco trained experts capable of
managing and repairing biomedical equipment and
II. development of expert skills through individualized
programmes that cater to the specific social,
cultural and technological needs of a region.

4. Present scenario
• The world has completely changed with
respect to 2006, when the ASIALINK project
was considered a landmark in South East Asia:
– Continuous connectivity (tablets, mobile phones)
– Social networks
– Free e-learning

5. The Open Source World
• Open Source product, developed by a community, without a
multinational brand now is not equal to un-reliable.
• Industrial and trade secrets prevent exposing specific problems with
medical devices [Bliznakov et al., 2007]
• The open source has in the community an intrisic revision process
OPEN ECG PULSE OXIMETER

6. Crowd-sourcing and crowd-thinking
• Obtaining needed services, ideas, or content
by soliciting contributions from a large group
of people, and especially from an online
community, rather than from traditional
employees or suppliers.
• The community becomes an active player,
which analyses quality, reliability and
feasibility.

7. What is a FabLab?

8. Sharing platforms
EngineeringWorld Health
www.ewh.com
This platform does not
teach locals how to create
or innovate
Thinginverse
www.thingiverse.com
This platform contains a
repository of projects
related to rapide
prototyping. There is no
quality control
RepRap
www.reprap.org
Training offered for
assembling own RP
machine. Does not teach
how to manufacture the
device you need.
Cooking Hacks
www.cooking-hacks.com
A summer school on do-it -
yourself being organized in
Spain. Generic, not specific
to biomedical engineering

9. Sharing platforms
• Although there are several resource sharing
platforms available as well as several courses
on RP, digital design and embedded
electronics, none of these is dedicated to
biomedical devices.
• This is because biomedical devices must be
designed first and foremost with patient
safety and efficacy in mind.

10. Regulation and documentation are essetial

11. The Crowd
• A groups of individuals trained and assisted by
institutions of technical and higher education,
to design, innovate and build together
through sharing.
• The Crowd can and should consist of
healthcare providers, engineers and
technicians.
• Standards and regulations guaranteed by
universities as the organ for control

12. The Open Source for
Biomedical Engineering project
• Giving BMEs in sub-Saharan Africa, through their
universities, the tools and know-how in order to
design, develop and maintain their own equipment
based on the new open source revolution
• Three main objectives:
– the development of human resources in higher education
in BME in Africa,
– The creation of the OS4BME infrastructure
– The making of a new genre of BME in Africa equipped with
the capacity to exploit and develop innovative designs

13. OS4BME platform
• A sharing, making and repository platform
based on the customization and integration of
already available web tool containing ideas,
blueprints, FAQs and safety regulations for
creating new, competitively priced and
innovative biomedical devices.
• Managed, regulated and monitored through
an academic led pan-African organization
• Fostering local economic growth

14. OS4BME concept

15. Teaching the Crowd phylosophy
• OS4BME platform requires the creation of a
professional BME working group, versed in the
regulatory aspects of biomedical safety and
standards, which is able to assess, vet and
categorize projects, designs or blueprints and
then make them available through the
platform open repository.

16. BME today
• Application of engineering concepts to
unsolved problems in biology and medicine.
• A great emphasis on niche subjects like MEMs
and cell engineering and less on the learning
of new, hard technology and equipment
management, maintenance and repair.
• Necessity of upgrading of curricula

17. Tools for Crowd-design
• Three main areas of teaching, necessary to
give a shape, a brain and to share the ideas:
– Physical RP (3D printing)
– Electronic RP
– Content Management and Sharing platforms

18. Tools: Open 3D Printing
• 3D printing (or Additive Manufacturing) is a
process of making a 3D solid object of virtually
any shape from a digital model.
• 3D printing is achieved using an additive process,
where successive layers of material are laid down
in different shapes.

19. Tools: Open 3D Printing
• RepRap: the first general-purpose self-replicating
manufacturing machines.
• Open source software:
– Design
– CAD/CAM
– Control
PRONTERFACE

20. Acknoledgments