Hello! We are the Tu Delft Biomedical Engineering for Global Health Lab

We work on Medical Innovations for Global Health to increase Universal Health coverage.

Our lab is part of the department of BioMechanical Engineering of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. We use our skills in designing innovations for the future to increase global access to medical equipment. Together with our international partners we research the current usage and barriers to medical equipment in hospitals around the world, we work on new innovations to increase availability and we offer education within and outside Delft University of Technology.

Our Story

Prof. Jenny Dankelman and Dr.ir.Roos Marieke Oosting founded the lab in 2016. We focus on the development of innovations in collaboration with end users with working in different clinical contexts around the world. Our projects aim to increase global access to high-quality medical care, and at the same time we take enviromental challenges affecting the use of this technology into account. Many of our designs are simple, affordable and reusable to increase global applicability and reduce its environmental impact.

We started our lab when the Delft Global Initiative offered funding for a PhD project conducted by Roos with the title: Towards Increased Global Availability of Surgical Equipment in 2016. During this project we conducted various studies to understand the context of use of surgical equipment in hospitals in Sub-Saharan Africa. These studies provided valuable insights on what equipment is currently (un)available and what the main barriers to implementation are. We researched the entire equipment journey, from design to procurement, usage, maintenance, and disposal. These findings have been very valuable to develop the context-driven design approach that we use for all our design projects. During this PhD project we were especially interested in the barriers to uptake of minimally invasive surgery in low-and middle-income countries since we strongly believe that this type of surgery will largely contribute to increased global access to surgery. We studied the current availability and barriers to laparoscopic equipment and the great need for context-specific electrosurgical devices led to the initiation of a design project focusing on this device. Roos defended her PhD successfully in 2019.

This project has led the foundation for a strong network of international partners in Europe, Africa, and the USA. And in the last years we have expanded our collaborations to India, Suriname, and Nepal.

Since our foundation in 2015, we have worked on various context-specific design projects together with medical experts working in a wide range of LMICs, including: an electrosurgical unit, video laryngoscope, manual vacuum extractor, needle cutter, USB-laparoscope, and sterilization units. Two of our designs are further developed by the spin-off company Layco Medical.

We have ongoing internship projects in Nepal, Suriname and Kenya focusing on maintenance, sterilization and 3D printing.

Team

Professor

Jenny Dankelman

Prof. Jenny Dankelman was appointed as full professor in Biomechanical Engineering at the TU Delft in 2001. Her work focuses on innovations for minimally invasive surgery, flexible endoscopes, and needle interventions. Since the last decade, her work focuses on developing innovations for global health.
In 2016, she gave a TED talk with the topic: worldwide access to quality surgical services. In 2018, she received a Royal award and became Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion
.In 2019, she was elected as one of the most inspiring female leaders of the Netherlands (InspriringFifty), became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and received the Professor of Exellent award (Leermeesterprijs) from the Delft University of Technology.

Assistant Professor

Roos Oosting

Roos Oosting works as Assistant Professor at the department of BioMechanical Engineering of the Delft University of Technology. Her work focuses on context-specific design of medical innovations to increase global access to healthcare. Roos has worked on various projects in Africa since 2008 and during her PhD she had the opportunity to live and work in Kenya. She is currently running various projects, mostly focusing on increasing global access to minimally invasive surgery.

Postdoc

Arjan Knulst

Arjan Knulst is working as a volunteer biomedical engineer for an NGO hospital in Nepal and is appointed as a researcher at the Delft University of Technology. His key interest is to perform research on the development and maintenance of medical devices for low-resource settings and training of biomedical equipment technicians.

Arjan holds a PhD and MSc in the field of biomedical engineering at the Delft University of Technology.

Students

We do not work on innovations for global health without the involvement of experts that work in the context we design for.

We are very grateful for the great partners from all over the world we get to work with, we could not do our work without them.

Please reach out if you want to be part of our network!

Our Partners

Contact

We are always looking for collaborations with students, engineers or clinicians, so please reach out if you are interested.

r.m.oosting@tudelft.nl
j.dankelman@tudelft.nl