ABEC Design Competition 2019

Cross-Cutting Issues in Healthcare: Global Technology Innovations in Surgery, Obstetrics and Anesthesia

The Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI), together with the African Biomedical Engineering Consortium (ABEC) and the UBORA consortium,  is holding the 2019 ABEC Design Competition with the theme ‘Cross-Cutting Issues in Healthcare: Global Technology Innovations in Surgery, Obstetrics and Anesthesia’.

This competition seeks innovative multidisciplinary ideas, overlapping engineering and medicine paradigms, from student teams. The sought ideas should tackle global challenges associated with surgical practice, obstetrics and anesthesia with an emphasis on low- and middle-income countries. Sustainable solutions can only be developed if engineers engage collaboratively with those at the forefront of delivering healthcare.

Successful teams emerging from the design competition will have one team member invited to a one-week design school featuring an innovative engineering instructional framework, namely Conceive Design Implement Operate (CDIO), which will be realized as a series of workshops and classes to equip students with the necessary skills to design a product by the end of the school. In addition, UBORA, an e-infrastructure for the co-design of open-source medical devices, underpinned by European Medical Device Standards, will be used to co-create, conceptualize and develop open-source medical devices.

According to the World Health Organization, clinical conditions requiring surgical, obstetric and anesthesia services amount to approximately one third of the global disease burden, yet more than two-thirds of the world population does not have access to safe, timely and affordable surgical and anesthesia care. In the era of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this discrepancy is no longer acceptable. To meet SDG3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages, surgery must clearly accommodate the critical components of public health and universal health coverage. According to a 2016 article in the Lancet Global Health by Riviello et al., most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) do not currently report surgical outcome data. Comparison of outcomes across the relatively few LMICs that actually report these data shows tremendous variability and much room for improvements to surgical care.

Evaluation procedure

Projects should be prepared according to the template downloadable at abec-africa.org/template

First stage

In the first stage, the evaluation process will be based on the following criteria:

  • Health Impact (5 Points)
    • Relevance to global innovations in surgery, obstetrics and anesthesia (3 Points)
    • Illustrates how the innovation will address the health need (1Point)
    • Demonstrates potential for widespread health impact (1 Point)
  • Technology/Process/Systems Innovation (5 Points)
    • Offers a new and creative solution (‘better/faster/cheaper/reliable/affordable’) (3 Points)
    • Provides convincing rationale for why this unique approach has the potential to work  (1 Point)
    • Multi-disciplinary team composition (1 Point)

Second stage

In the second stage, the evaluation process will be based on the following criteria:

  • Health Impact (3 Points)
    • Relevance to global innovations in surgery, obstetrics and anaesthesia (2 Points)
    • Illustrates how the innovation will address the health need (1Point)
  • Technology/Process/Systems Innovation (7 Points)
    • Offers a new and creative solution (‘better/faster/cheaper/reliable/affordable’) (2 points)
    • Provides a convincing rationale for why this unique approach has the potential to work (2.5 points)
    • Addresses significant technical issues relevant for low- and middle-income countries, and cost efficiency (2 points
    • Multi-disciplinary team composition (0.5 points)

Benefits

For the 40 best-ranked projects full-board for one team member to attend the 2019 ABEC Design School to be held at Uganda Industrial Research Institute, Kampala, Uganda from 7th to 11th October 2019 will be covered.

In addition, qualifying projects from ABEC universities selected in the top 28 best-ranked projects will have travel for one team member covered from their home countries to Kampala. The total number of participants is 40. A limited number of places are reserved for students from universities outside ABEC.

Eligibility criteria

Participants should be enrolled as either undergraduate or master students at any university. Students who have already obtained a Master’s degree (in any discipline) are not eligible.

Submission procedure

The project brief, prepared according to the templates must be one PDF document saved as Project Brief_Title_Last_name_of_Applicant. Send the file to [email protected].

Important Dates 

Timeline for the 2019 ABEC Design Competition:

  1. Project brief submission as per template – due on 1st April 12th April 2019 (Midnight EAT)
  2. Notification to applicants accepted for full proposal submission – 16th April 29th April 2019
  3. Submission of full proposals as per template – due on 13th June 21st June 2019 (Midnight EAT)
  4. Announcement of finalists –28th June 8th July 2019