The 7th East Africa Regional Healthcare Engineering Conference (EARC) 2024 in Mwanza, Tanzania, brought together scholars and professionals to address critical challenges in biomedical engineering. Representing a collaborative international team, our intern Mr Ernest Bwogi presented research on oxygen concentrator failures in low-resource settings, exploring the impact of dust and humidity. The experience was transformative, offering valuable feedback, inspiring discussions, and fostering meaningful connections. This milestone highlighted the importance of collaboration, persistence, and knowledge-sharing in driving innovation.

Dr. Davide Piaggio from the University of Warwick played a key role in the "IoT and AI for Frugal Innovation 2024" bootcamp, hosted by Università Campus Bio-Medico of Rome. Dr. Piaggio, along with PhD student James Wallace, led sessions on frugal innovation, 3D printing design, and blood pressure estimation using PPG signals. The bootcamp, supported by the Biomedical Engineering Institute and the Society & Culture Spotlight, provided students with hands-on learning in resource-constrained environments, with special recognition for scholarship recipient Dr. Gamal Abdulnaser Yahya Al-Kawsi.

The WHO has published two key documents to improve healthcare in low-resource settings: "Medical Device Donations: Considerations for Solicitation and Provision" and the WHO Compendium of Innovative Health Technologies. These publications, developed with contributions from Davide Piaggio and Leandro Pecchia of the ABSPIE Lab, among others, focus on frugal and sustainable biomedical engineering. They underscore the importance of safety, quality, and regulatory compliance in medical device donations and highlight innovative health technologies. This work reflects the strong collaboration between the ABSPIE Lab and WHO in advancing global health.

The fourth-year MEng group, supervised by Dr Davide Piaggio, has just been awarded the School of Engineering Group Innovation Award for their project on a device for screening for and monitoring neurodegeneration in the elderly, for which they scored a high first class.

"This project was initially proposed by one of the students, Ben Hoskings, and I decided to embark on the adventure of supervising my first fourth-year project. Since when I met the team, I had no doubt in their skills and I thought that this could really go somewhere. We have now applied for the Eutopia PhD Co-tutelle with VUB, to see whether we can take this forward. Congratulations to all the awardees, it was a pleasure working with you!" Davide Piaggio

The 9th European Medical and Biological Engineering Conference (EMBEC 2024) took place at the Congress Centre Bernardin in Portorož, Slovenia, from June 9 to 13, 2024. Organized by the Slovenian Society for Medical and Biological Engineering and supported by the IFMBE, this conference showcased traditional and emerging fields in Biomedical Engineering. Highlighted topics included Artificial Intelligence in Health Care, Tissue Engineering, Bioinformatics, Neurotechnology, Electroporation-based Treatments, and Technologies for Medicine and Biology, with an emphasis on education, translational research, and commercialization.

The ABSPIE Lab, representing the University of Warwick’s School of Engineering, made significant contributions. Access the whole piece of news to read the details.