I want to engineer solutions in the medical space that actually help people. This is one of the few places I believe we can really improve the world.
I am a biomedical engineer from Johannesburg. I took a Master of Science in Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand. My dissertation asked whether Earth’s-field nuclear magnetic resonance could read blood-pressure metrics without the usual cuff-and-guess — a hard modelling problem, and a human one.
Years on the scope followed: histology (gross morphology and cancer resections), cytology (liquid-based cytology and Pap smears), and hematology, including rare blood disorders you can still call from a smear. I also build the software and cloud behind low-cost diagnostic imaging — getting a field off a bench and into a call.
I worked at a startup that started out trying to improve life in the third world. We had to pivot. Most people will not invest in problems that mainly affect the poor. The work I still want to do spans Africa, and the rest of the world, wherever a lack of medical skill costs time that could have saved a life.
The Call is a small piece of the same bet. Look at the field. Make the call. Learn the differences that usually take a specialist. The tools exist now to make that work more engaging, strip out most of the normal work, and leave them the truly difficult diagnoses — the ones that save lives.
Start with the people at the bottom.