Hello!
Welcome to my last blog. I can’t believe how quickly these two months have passed. This experience is one I will carry with me for a long time. In the beautiful city of Nairobi, I built meaningful connections and picked up phrases like pole pole and hakuna matata, words that eased my initial uncertainty in a new environment and reminded me to slow down, listen, and be patient — lessons that shaped how I approached both work and life here.
I grew in more ways than I expected, taking on challenges I never imagined, learning new technical skills, and developing personally. There were tough moments: spending a week researching signal processing methods, staring at endless rows of breadboard sockets, and troubleshooting code for hours. In the past, I might have rushed through these challenges, looking for quick fixes. But adopting the pole pole mindset taught me to slow down, be patient, and work through problems methodically. By approaching obstacles from different angles, noticing the details in the slowed-down observations, and trusting the process, I found solutions that were both more thoughtful and more effective.
Workshop and Clinical Visits
In the first 3 weeks, we were met with a warm welcome from both the summer workshop students and our mentors. I want to thank all members of my team, BioNova, Alex, Yvette, Diana, and Daniel. They come from different backgrounds, and I learned so much from them. We worked together to build and prototype various things: a phone holder, a foot rest, and an ultrasonic sensor. All from scratch! Seeing these ideations come into reality, I became excited about what we could achieve.
We also had the chance to connect with other Rice students in Kenya. I hadn’t expected so many different programs to be thriving here, but we met with iSEED and GMI students to shadow in hospitals and conduct needs-finding. In the Accident and Emergency units of Kiambu and Thika hospitals, I observed minor surgeries and saw firsthand how patients were cared for. While the infrastructure in Kenya differed significantly from what I was used to, the passion and dedication of the clinicians were unmistakable; the same deep commitment to helping those in pain.
The Pinard Horn Story
From our needs-finding analysis, we noticed many clinicians using the Pinard Horn to assess fetal heart rates because ultrasounds were rarely available for routine use. It made us wonder: what if there was a way to give mothers reassurance about their baby’s health using something as accurate as an ultrasound, yet affordable and accessible? Our first idea was to retrofit a Pinard Horn with a microcontroller cap that could read and display the heart rate.
Over the next two weeks, we dove into building it. We began with an Arduino, only to find it couldn’t handle the signal processing requirements. We switched to an ESP-32, but it was finicky, prone to frying, and still limited by short-term storage issues. Then came the Raspberry Pi, which led us to realize the real issue might not be the processor at all — it was the microphone. It simply wasn’t picking up the frequencies we needed for fetal heart sounds.
It felt like we had hit a wall. We tested recordings over and over, only to get the same disappointing results. Then we asked ourselves: what if we used the microphones already built into smartphones? Not only would this solve the hardware issue, but it could also make the device usable at home, letting mothers hear their baby’s heartbeat anytime. The catch? None of us had ever built an app before. So, in true Hakuna Matata spirit, we started from scratch, learning through YouTube tutorials, making mistake after mistake, and celebrating the small victories as we began to see the first hints of a working front-end.
ACE-ing the Active Cast
Our host project focused on creating an active cast that could help reduce muscle atrophy in patients recovering from sports-related injuries. The idea was to go beyond simply immobilizing the limb and instead integrate a therapeutic function directly into the cast.
We began by brainstorming widely, considering everything from electromagnetic stimulation to purely mechanical methods of maintaining muscle activity. Each concept was evaluated against criteria such as cost, portability, ease of use, effectiveness, and suitability for low-resource settings. After putting our ideas through design matrices, one approach stood out as the most promising: electrical stimulation therapy.
Electrical stimulation works by delivering controlled pulses to the muscles. Over time, this can help preserve muscle mass and even promote the regeneration of muscle fibers that would otherwise degrade during immobilization.
To make the device more than just a passive therapy tool, we decided to incorporate monitoring capabilities as well. By adding an EMG (electromyography) circuit, the cast could record muscle activity in real time, storing and transmitting this data to clinicians. The result was a concept for a cast that would not only protect and immobilize an injured limb but also actively work to prevent muscle loss, bridging the gap between treatment and recovery monitoring in a single device.
Final Thank You!
I am grateful to everyone who made this experience possible. Waka, a student at Kenyatta University, worked with us on the ACE project and contributed so many creative ideas. Our mentors, Eubrea and Stacy, regularly checked in to offer advice, feedback, and encouragement. Dr. June provided valuable guidance on both the technical and business sides of our projects, sharing tips on product development and opening doors to networking opportunities. Dr. Ken arranged our hospital visits and gave an insightful lecture on the Kenyan healthcare system.
I also want to thank Dr. Mugambi (OB/Gyn at Pumwani Hospital), Dr. Mugambi (Pediatric Surgeon), and Dr. Longji (OB/Gyn at Kenyatta University Hospital) for their feedback on the Rice360 devices and for offering practical advice on our Pinard Horn project.
Finally, I want to thank my co-interns, Jacey and Saumya! We navigated challenges and celebrated milestones together, and I couldn’t have done it without you guys:) We hope to continue our Auto-Feto projects back in Houston, continuing our efforts to make fetal heart rate monitoring more accessible.
Looking back, this experience taught me far more than technical skills. I learned the value of patience, adaptability, and truly listening, whether to teammates, mentors, or the communities we aimed to serve. I
discovered that innovation is not just about finding a solution, but about understanding the problem from every angle and being willing to pivot when the path forward changes. Most importantly, I saw how collaboration, empathy, and persistence can turn an idea into something with real potential to make a difference. Kenya challenged me, inspired me, and reminded me why I want to keep building solutions that bridge gaps in healthcare.
Signing off,
Ellena
Next, we were tasked to create a foot stand. From ideation and design to precise measurements, we made sure that we finalized every detail before going into the manual work.To construct the base, we used a saw to cut metal at 45-degree angles to create a mitered joint. You may be wondering why are we using hand tools to cut metal? Well, I wondered the same thing, but in lower resource settings, electricity is not always guaranteed. Or, as our mentor, Eubrea, puts it, “I like to see you suffer.”
However, the angles did not quite align. We spent hours trying to perfect every corner to 90 degrees. Despite our efforts, we still ended up with small gaps at the joints. After welding, we spray-painted the steel base.
