By Katalina Siasau
Helping local technicians to develop skills in biomedical engineering, eight young biomedical engineering students from the University of Canterbury are spending five weeks in Tonga conducting various trainings with technicians from the Ministry of Health at Vaiola Hospital.
Leading the program is UC Associate Professor Debbie Munro, who led the initial program in 2019.
Speaking with Matangi Tonga, Munro said she wanted to make a difference in the quality of health care here, and therefore she changed the program to work better for Tonga.
Instead of lending additional hands to repair things in the hospital, she said what was really needed was, "training to teach the technicians about medical devices, and the anatomy and physiology that's involved with those devices, what diseases and illnesses they treat, and how they commonly fail or need to be repaired."
Five of the UC students are in their third year of biomedical engineering, and three have completed their fourth year of study, while all have a background in mechanical or mechatronics engineering.
To help improve the biomedical engineering training, these students are assisting local technicians in three projects including training the technicians on using a 3D printer.
The 3D printer will help technicians build spare parts and replacement parts that they can't find elsewhere, and that will allow them to keep equipment running longer and better over time.
Meanwhile, other students are working with technicians to convert electrical beds to manual operation, by removing the electronics and using locally sourced materials and parts to make the beds functional again.
Munro said electrical beds that were donated from other countries failed to function in Tonga because the humidity and the environment quickly corroded the batteries, the electronics and the wires, and then it becomes a problem for the hospital.
The students are also helping Vaiola Hospital on asset management systems by implementing a new software, and creating a training manual for its operation, and looking at how they can make it work better, so that there's more information and better management.
This is needed because everything at the hospital is tagged with a label to identify it, including medical devices and hospital equipment. Everything that the hospital owns goes into this database, and Munro said it becomes very large very fast.
Two students will be traveling with the asset registry team to Vava'u on 20 January, where they will be at Prince Ngu hospital for two weeks.
TNU collab
Munro is also working closely together with the Tonga National University with the goal to ultimately develop a biomedical technology course or training program, while using the technicians as a pilot study.
She said that eventually they would also like to offer high school students to get a level four qualification at TNU, similar to the programs that they have in automotive repair and electrical.
Munro is accompanied by UC electronics technician Julian Phillips. Munro will be here until 21 January, and Julian until 29 January. An additional UC staff member will be arriving on 27 January and will remain with the students to the end of their stay, on 15 February.
Munro's goal is to return to Tonga every year to progress the work.
The UC biomedical engineering students in Tonga are Aden Sadler, Nick Dewhurst, Flynn Wilson, Rokhan Kalim, Seb Van Veen, Jiwoo Son, Milan Hildreth, and Nuha Iskandar-Zulkarnain.