Educate Ethical and Innovative Leaders for Africa

When it comes time to choose a final year project, students at Ashesi often make their choices for various reasons. For some, project decisions may revolve around plans for a startup, while others may make their decisions based on their ability to execute.

For Eyram '22, Electrical and Electronic Engineering major at Ashesi, her project was inspired by her own experiences growing up as a child with asthma. Having been unable to participate in many activities or visit different places because of fear of an asthmatic attack, she wanted to build a solution that could help make life easier for children with similar conditions.

Her idea? Design and build a portable monitoring device and dosage counter device that could help asthmatic children better recognize triggers in their environment and, where necessary, alerts the user to urgently retrieve a rescue inhaler. Through sensors for air quality, humidity, and temperature, the device sends environment readings to a database that allows doctors to also understand which environments their patients are often in, which can be useful for dosage recommendations.

"The dosage counter also monitors how many times an inhaler was used per day," says Eyram. "This information is also included in a database and helps the doctor determine if adjustments need to be made to improve the user's condition."

To complete the project, Eyram had to learn additional skills around the design of printed circuit boards, as well as transferring data from the boards to a computer.

"I didn't do any classes on the Internet of Things, so I had to learn about a whole new set of systems," adds Eyram. "However, it's been exciting, and I have learned a lot of new things. I am grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Elena Rosca, who encouraged and supported me. I am also thankful to Engineering Department faculty, Nicholas Korblah Tali, and Peter Lawerh Kwao, for their immense help and feedback."