For people with dysphagia, a sip of water or a bite of food can carry risks most people never think about. The swallowing disorder, often associated with stroke, neurological conditions, or age, can make eating and drinking difficult and create a need for ongoing monitoring and care.
Swello, a Global Social Impact Fellowship project at Lehigh University, is working to improve dysphagia care in Kazakhstan through a new design rooted in local resources and clinical partnerships. Mentored by Dhruv Seshadri, assistant professor of bioengineering, the team is developing low-cost, sustainable hydrogel electrodes made with wheat, an agricultural surplus in Kazakhstan, for use in a country where access to advanced swallowing assessment tools remains limited.
The 2026 Impact Fellows, Elijah Bergen ’29, an integrated business and engineering major, Victoria Delgado ’27, a mechanical engineering major, Hannah Su ’28, a computer engineering major, and Jacob ten Bosch ’27, a bioengineering major, traveled to Almaty this summer to test and refine the electrodes with clinicians, patients and community partners.
The project began with a focus on a wearable device for dysphagia monitoring. During the past year, the team’s work has expanded toward the electrodes themselves: low-cost medical consumables that can capture swallowing-related signals and, potentially, other biomedical signals such as muscle activity and heart activity.
“Swello started with a very specific clinical need: how do we better monitor swallowing function for patients with dysphagia?” Seshadri said. “Through the work of the students and our collaborators in Kazakhstan, we saw that the technology could have a much broader impact. These electrodes can support swallowing assessment, but they can also help us think differently about low-cost medical consumables and locally relevant biomedical devices.”
The hydrogel material connects the design to one of Kazakhstan’s major agricultural products. The synthesized material also offers a more sustainable alternative to petroleum-based materials commonly used in medical consumables.
Seshadri said the broader material platform is now being developed under the name AgriMed, with Swello continuing to represent the wheat-based electrode work focused on swallowing.
During fieldwork, the team conducted an IRB-approved EMG study and compared its hydrogel electrodes with commercial electrodes already used in clinical settings. Students also gathered feedback from participants to better understand how the technology performed and how it could be improved.
One of the team’s most significant milestones came through its collaboration with Dr. Chingiz Shashkin and speech-language pathologists at the Shashkin Clinic. Working alongside clinicians, the team explored how its electrodes could monitor swallow effort, heart rate, coughing and aspiration risk for patients with dysphagia.
As far as the team knows, it was the first time wearable EMG sensors had been used for dysphagia monitoring in Kazakhstan.
The experience showed how much the project changed once the team moved from designing in the lab to testing with the people the technology is intended to serve.
“It’s one thing to design a device on paper,” ten Bosch said. “It’s completely different to sit with speech-language pathologists and patients, see what they need in real time, and watch the technology begin to take shape in someone’s care.”
That combination of technical development, local partnership and long-term commitment is central to the Global Social Impact Fellowship model, said Khanjan Mehta, vice provost for creative inquiry.
“Swello is a strong example of what we hope GSIF ventures can become,” Mehta said. “It is a long-term partnership where students work alongside local clinicians and communities to co-create technologies that are scientifically rigorous, locally manufacturable and capable of creating lasting social impact. The team’s evolution, from building a device to rethinking the underlying medical consumable, shows the curiosity, adaptability and systems thinking that define this work.”
Back at Lehigh, the team will continue refining the hydrogel electrodes and use the findings from its swallow studies to guide the next stage of design: a wearable device for dysphagia monitoring. Students are also developing two manuscripts from the fieldwork, including one focused on the clinical and engineering findings and another on an AI in Medicine workshop co-hosted with TremorTrack, another Global Social Impact Fellowship team, in Almaty.