Fall 2018 Engineering Design and Problem Solving > Project Description
Section E: Cost-effective Diabetes Management
Prof. Raja araja@cooper.edu
The health and economic burdens of diabetes in countries like Uganda are crippling. Diabetes requires frequent monitoring of blood sugar; however the cost of glucose monitors and test strips can be prohibitive to most of the population in this country where the median income per family is about $650 per year. The lack of access to basic knowledge about diabetes and the inability to afford glucose monitoring devices results in loss of mobility and significantly diminishes quality of life with many patients succumbing to the disease in the first year.
The objective of this section is to have students to work in multidisciplinary teams to design, fabricate and build low-cost tools for diabetes management. The prototypes must be accurate, robust and user-friendly addressing challenges of access, self-care and social stigma. They should be easily maintained and use locally available resources. The designs should be simple, precise and well-documented so that hospitals and medical professionals can replicate it locally in a self-taught fashion. Students will work with our partners in the Global Diabetes Institute at Albert Einstein Medical Center and have access to physician experts in local hospitals in Kampala and industry experts in blood glucose monitoring systems.
Related URL: Fall 2017 Course Page: https://engfac.cooper.edu/araja/661.
News Story: http://blogs.einstein.yu.edu/coming-together-to-help-amputees-in-uganda/