Infectious Disease

These modular and rapidly deployable treatment units use ultra-efficient building envelope technology to moderate the temperature of the unit and simplify decontamination efforts – enabling safer and more comfortable conditions for health care workers and patients. Designed to overcome the challenges that traditional “soft-shell” facilities (tents) face, this hard-shell unit features improved thermal efficiency, super-insulation, a design that facilitates easy cleaning, and interior surfaces and fixtures constructed from “direct contact kill” anti-bacterial and/or anti-viral materials.

The Emergency ‘Smart’ Pod serves as a scalable, portable Ebola treatment unit. The ESP also provides training and process pathways, controlled access-entry, as well as patient and supply tracking systems. Other features include contained waste disposal and disinfection systems, air conditioning, HEPA filtration and the ability to connect multiple pods to increase bed volume. The ESP also has a suite of “smart” apps and pathways to facilitate clinical quality and efficiency.

This redesigned Ebola treatment tent aims to substantially improve working conditions for health care workers through its ergonomic design, which allows for a significant increase in airflow and decrease in ambient temperatures. A team of students and faculty led by Makerere University College of Health Sciences, School of Public Health (MakSPH), teamed up with those from the College of Engineering, Design Art and Technology (CEDAT) to design the next generation tent for humanitarian interventions.

Shift Labs’ low-cost, battery-powered infusion monitor delivers IV fluids with precision to patients, eliminating the risk of fluid overload. Fluids administered too aggressively can be harmful to patients, especially young children and patients with conditions that predispose them to fluid overload. Hydration is critical for Ebola patient survival and without consistent electricity in many treatment environments it becomes difficult to use more advanced infusion monitors and fluid tracking becomes complicated and time consuming.

This wearable patient sensor utilizes state-of-the-art advances in wearable technologies and analytics. This sensor goes on like a band-aid and is both disposable and Bluetooth-enabled; it will continue to measure key vital signs including heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, and oxygen saturation of Ebola patients in ETUs and those suspected to be infected. This tool allows for remote monitoring, improved patient care and enhanced health care worker safety.

Development and testing of a novel microfluidic platform - VectorChip - that enables the large-scale autonomous collection of individual saliva droplets originating from single mosquito bites that can be used to identify the mosquito and pathogen species, including a broad range of human biting mosquitoes (Anopheles, Aedes, Culex) and numerous pathogens (including Zika, Dengue and Malaria).

Development of a novel low-cost, cloud connected system of smart ovitraps that will provide real-time mosquito surveillance data to health administrators, communities, and individuals. This proposed mosquito surveillance allows for outbreak modeling, targeted resource allocation/redirection, and community-driven interventions.

Development and testing of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), a non-destructive technique that can be used to measure multiple characteristics of a mosquito sample with a single, 3-second reading. This reading could then be used to identify unique signatures of arbovirus in mosquitoes to help with identification of hotspots and rapid management.

Development of a mobile phone application that allows for the detection of mosquito species using acoustic surveillance through global crowdsourcing. Mosquito-generated species-specific sounds can be recorded on a cellphone, and the distinct frequencies are processed to build biomarkers for a given species, and together with phone-based metadata enable the species-specific identification of mosquitoes in near real-time.

Development of an inexpensive, intelligent trap that attracts and captures adult Ae. aegypti mosquitoes, automatically classifies captured mosquitoes by species and sex and provides counts of these insects to connected mobile devices.