AISHA began their day with a farewell to Eric Obeysakre, our faculty mentor, who was leaving for the U.S earlier than the rest owing to academic commitments at Lehigh. While we were definitely going to feel his absence, his departure reminded us that our time in Salone was drawing to a close, and we needed to start wrapping up the work left. With that in mind, AISHA left for the office.

Last picture of the full AISHA team in Sierra Leone

Upon reaching the office, we waited til 9:30. We had to visit Brenda Hospital once more to review it more thoroughly as a candidate as well as conduct a demo for the staff, and we had agreed to depart at 9:30 with the CareAlert team who were heading there too.

Once we got to the hospital, AISHA hit full swing. We performed a demo for the interns, nurses, and the C.H.O all together and it would not be an understatement to say that they loved it. From Answers to Quizzes, they were enthralled with the device and kept on asking when it would be installed in the facility. Thrilled by the interaction, AISHA proceeded to meet with the Co-Founder/Superintendent Dr. Brimah once more to provide him with a demo as well. To our excitement, his impression of the device was similar. He was intrigued by our functionalities and claimed that it would be of certain use to his employees.

Picture at Branda!

In addition, we confirmed that there was Wi-Fi available throughout the hospital and primarily in the Optics department which is a key factor for our device. After obtaining this valuable information, AISHA decided to head to their next destination – Makeni Regional Hospital. Our purpose at Makeni Regional was to meet with Sister Victoria to provide a demonstration of Alexa and satisfy any other inquiries, while also scouting out other departments. Unfortunately, Sister Victoria was not available owing to her examinations and we could not meet her.

However, we did happen to learn that a library was available in the hospital. Happy to learn about another potential candidate for our product, we ventured inside and performed interviews with the employee, providing demos as well. The employee was impressed but it did seem that the location was not adequate enough for our product and owing to a shortage of Alexas, we decided against leaving one there.

Following our experience at Regional, we went back to the office. We caught up on our technical work by augmenting the database, discussing the candidates, and passing the time till our departure for Loreta Clinic at 1:30 p.m. where we had another meeting with Sister Adama.

On our arrival at Masuba, we were greeted by a loud, cheerful environment. Sister Adama took time out of her busy schedule and agreed to meet us. Juliana conducted the interview and informed the nurse about our product’s functionalities, however, we were not able to provide Sister Adama with a demo of the device owing to a power shortage. Because of that, our meeting ended fairly early but we did manage to conclude that it would not be wise to leave our device in that setting due to poor connectivity, power shortages, lack of interns, and a lack of enthusiasm from Sister Adama herself according to our judgment. Nonetheless, it was useful information that helped us eliminate another candidate from our list.

Upon our return to the office, we debriefed and shared opinions about the day, analyzing the encounters. We proceeded to consult our Rubrik once more for a revised evaluation. This evaluation resulted in a decision to leave one device at the optics department at Brenda as all of our requirements were met. There was a stable internet connection, stable power, enthusiasm from the director, and a large number of users. This decision was huge for AISHA as it provided us with our first pilot which would not be hindered by connectivity issues and would last a whole year.

Apart from Branda, we also landed on Loreta Hospital as our choice for the same reasons apart from the Wi-FI as we are not sure about its availablity. But as our other criteria was satisfied, Loreta was selected for our device as well. The emphrologist in Freetown is another candidate that we selected owing to his vast connections and the fact that he has the potential to be our champion for the product and advertise it across Sierra Leone. This discussion wrapped up our day.