UD Story
Lori Hanna lived in Nicaragua for two months with a family who had no running water or electricity. Her experience with the UD engineering service-learning program ETHOS left her with a plan to help address one of their needs: safe medical care.
Her ETHOS project — solar cookers — sparked an idea to create solar-powered autoclaves to sterilize medical equipment in rural clinics. After analyzing clinic needs, she began designing the autoclave, conceptualizing manufacturing and investigating sales potential. She's made significant progress toward making it a viable product. Fellow engineering students in the Design and Manufacturing Clinic will help finesse the design while Hanna refines her business strategy as a finalist in the School of Business Administration's 2008 business plan competition, where the top prize of $10,000 could help jumpstart the autoclave's production.
Her host family taught her much about life, says Hanna, who came to UD from Wadsworth, Ohio. The autoclave is one way she can give back.
The Story - Last summer I went to Nicaragua for two months as part of the ETHOS program. I lived and worked there as an engineer to improve solar cookers. I lived with a host family and they had no electricity and no running water. It was quite a learning experience both in life and in engineering because I got to learn what it was like to live and work with little to no resources. I got to one, appreciate a lot of things, but two, realize a lot of needs.
My name is Lori Hanna and I'm a junior mechanical engineering student here at UD. I've danced my whole life so I've continued that here at UD; I'm part of the dance ensemble and I enjoy that a lot.
Through discussions with people in Nicaragua, I've found that rural clinics have a really hard time sterilizing their medical instruments because they can't afford the electricity that would be necessary to power an autoclave. They have to get on a bus, go to a hospital 20 miles away, pay to get the instruments sterilized and go back the next day to pick them up. It's really an extensive process that's not really accounted for in the system.
I'm designing a solar-powered medical instrument sterilizer. It's also called an autoclave. This autoclave design fits inside a solar cooker. It's going to be some kind of contraption that fits inside the cooker that gets up to the desired temperatures to be able to sterilize medical instruments.
I'm looking at the design, materials, needs and the manufacturing and sales aspect all kind of at the same time. It's a lot. Some people aren't sure that I'm going to be able to do it in my two years left.
I learned so much from my host family. They took care of me for two months; they fed me and washed my clothes. They taught me so much about appreciating life, appreciating family, appreciating friends and relationships and that is kind of my way to give back to them.
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