New Bioinnovation Center in Ghana

BioE/COS Professor Lee Makowski established a Bioinnovation Center in Ghana at Academic City University College. He is developing and distributing affordable, locally designed medical technologies, including ventilator technology that was originally developed by the late Craig Smallwood, PhD’18, bioengineering.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Noah Lloyd. Main photo: Marc Fuller, bioengineering lecturer at Northeastern University, presents a workshop on the rapid prototyping of biomedical devices to students at the University of Ghana. Courtesy photo.
Northeastern’s Bioinnovation Center is developing low-cost biomedical devices to transform health care in West Africa
The new Bioinnovation Center, housed at Academic City University College in Ghana and in partnership with Northeastern, will develop novel solutions to complex problems in West African health clinics.
In the West African country of Ghana, “there’s somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 rural health clinics” that provide the majority of health care services to its population, says Lee Makowski, professor of bioengineering and chemistry and chemical biology at Northeastern University.
“Current biomedical devices,” Makowski says, “are very expensive,” and many—if not most—of these clinics cannot afford them.
Makowski also points to a lack of training on such devices—“they’re over-engineered, they’re overly complex”—and an inability to receive spare parts or maintenance as further problems the rural health clinics face.
With the Bioinnovation Center, in partnership with Northeastern and housed at Academic City University College in Accra, Makowski envisions a hub of development—aligned with entrepreneurship—that could change the face of health care in West Africa.
“We need to develop a consortium that includes health care workers” and physicians, Makowski says. But you also “need engineers, and you need entrepreneurs who will help those engineers learn how to commercialize products and get them into the marketplace. That’s the only way you will be able to scale up the solution to match the scope of the problem.”
Take for example the ventilator, which provides oxygen to patients—patients who might be anywhere along a spectrum of critical to stable.
Ventilators, Makowski says, can cost over $20,000. Shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, “one of the businessmen we talked to in Accra contacted me and said, ‘Can you buy ventilators for Ghana?’”
Makowski says he spent “enough time looking into it to discover that every ventilator on Earth had already been purchased probably twice, and that every ventilator that was going to be made for the next six months had already been purchased.” Not only were they priced beyond the means of most West African health care clinics, they were, for all intents and purposes, completely unavailable.
While building out a new bioengineering department at Northeastern, Makowski says, “I was delighted and somewhat surprised to find—as we grew the department—the number of students who are very interested in trying to contribute to improving health care delivery in West Africa, sub-Saharan Africa.”
But despite his students’ interest and a few professional connections, “It soon became clear that for me to actually make any progress, I would have to go and see what things look like.”
Delivering health care in West Africa, even beyond the economic realities, is a tall order. “You see patients at 30, or maybe even 37 degrees Celsius,” roughly 86 to 99 degrees Fahrenheit, “or in very high humidity. High levels of dust and variable electrical current,” Makowski says.
“Most medical instruments do not last long when used in those conditions.”
Further, medical services in these health clinics are primarily provided by non-physician health care workers—which doesn’t mean they aren’t well trained, Makowski is quick to note, but “the devices they use need to be matched to the environment they are used in and the training that health care workers have received.”
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Courtesy photo Courtesy photo LEFT: Lee Makowski (front row, third from left) poses for a photo in the village of Akyem Dwenase, Ghana. Also in the photo are Sam Burd (right of Makowski), member of the Northeastern Bioengineering Industrial Advisory Board, Kwabena Kyei-Aboagye (fourth from right), chief of Akyem Dwenase, and Thelma Asare (far right), 4GBI medical director. RIGHT: Makowski (far left), with Burd (second from left) and Asare (middle), receive a gift of palm wine during a welcome prior to visiting a rural health clinic. Courtesy photos.
As part of the effort, Noah Joseph, sr. lab technician for Northeastern’s bioengineering department, created Solidworks parts and assemblies of the ventilator unit technology developed by the late Craig Smallwood, PhD’18, bioengineering, designed the tube holder mechanism, sourced components, and fabricated/assembled the design using laser cutting and 3D printing.
Read full story at Northeastern Global News