Carolyn Arden is the project lead and founder of for the Washington University Guatemala Initiative (WUGI), a group working in association with the Washington University Engineers Without Borders chapter. The goal of the Guatemala Initiative is to improve public health in Guatemala, specifically, through using engineering thinking and technology to support and enhance Roosevelt Hospital, the largest public hospital in Guatemala, in a sustainable and impactful way. This summer, the group travelled to Roosevelt Hospital in Guatemala City to perform some much needed repairs on medical equipment at the hospital.
Carolyn and the other members of the Guatemala Initiative prepared for their trip during the academic year by undergoing hands-on training with BJC clinical asset management to learn about basic troubleshooting, the functionality and usage of various medical equipment, and the specific devices and models that they anticipated repairing at the hospital. After they arrived, they quickly put those skills to work. During their stay, the group managed to fix several ventilators and ECG’s, among other equipment, and develop important relationships with professionals and academic institutions in the area. In future trips, the group hopes to continue their work do continued work at Roosevelt Hospital, expand the program to UNICAR and INCAN, begin working on larger-scale projects such as a power grid and organizational databases, and to support and guide one of Guatemala’s top engineering universities to continue the work WUGI began at Roosevelt.
Read the full story in The Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering: Systems Engineering Student, Carolyn Arden (BSSSE 2016), leads the Washington University Guatemala Initiative