Engineering for Global Surgery
There is a huge need for surgical care in developing countries. Approximately 2 billion people around the world still have no access to basic surgical care and around 5 billion people do not have access to safe surgery. Currently surgical eqipment is designed an manufactured with a mian focus on the context in high income settings. In low income countries surgical equipment is often not availabe, or missing spare parts or is broken. We aim to come with affordable, reusable, robust medical devices that fit the local context.
During your internship you will investigate the local context, work on a concrete problem that needs an engineering/systematic solution. This can be a device, such as needle cutter, fixation system after an orthepedic intervention, but also develop training for medical technicians to repair equipement, improve sterilisation and cleaning processes, reduce/improve waste handling of a hospital, etc.
Currently we have contacts in Nepal, Suriname, Indonesia, and Kenia.
Please let me know if you are interested, and I will help looking for an internship.
Kind regards,
Jenny Dankelman, j.dankelman@tudelf.tnl
Jenny Dankelman is professor in Minimally Invasive Surgery and Interventional Techniques at the Delft University of Technology (www.MISIT.nl). She obtained her degree in Mathematics, with a specialisation in System and Control Engineering at the University of Groningen in 1984 and her PhD degree on the dynamics of the coronary circulation at the Delft University of Technology (DUT) in 1989. In 2001 she was awarded the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek chair and shortly after she became head of the Minimally Invasive Surgery and Interventional Techniques group (www.MISIT.nl). Between 2010 and 2014 she was head of the Department of BioMechanical Engineering and in 2013 she became Medical Delta professor.
Her research focuses on minimally invasive surgery, needle interventions and endovascular interventions. Her research group cooperates with several hospitals such as Leiden UMC where she holds a part time professorship position, Erasmus MC Rotterdam and the AMC Amsterdam. Her interests and research projects are in the fields of designing novel medical instruments, haptics, training and simulation systems, and patient safety, with the focus on minimally invasive techniques. Recently she started a number of projects to develop affordable multi-functional surgical instruments and an innovative surgical equipment system that allows minimally invasive surgery without the need for a sterile operating room, which is especially relevant to low-resource settings. |