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Technology Dissemination to Developing Markets Supported by MIT

A small office, off the infinite corridor, hosts MIT’s International Development Initiative program (IDI). IDI’s mission is to help ideas, worked on at MIT, become products and reach people in developing economies creating a social benefit.
Most ideas never make it into products. The gap between good ideas to good implementation is even wider when the intended user is many miles away from the inventor. IDI helps to bridge the gap, many times by flying the entrepreneurs to the destination markets where they refine and test their ideas.
This summer IDI granted its Technology Dissemination Fellowship to Evotech, the affordable endoscopy venture I am part of. We are using the grant to develop a medical light source to work with our endoscope. With the grant we hired an intern from MIT who works on prototyping and especially on the light’s electric board. We also used the fellowship to purchase components needed for the device and its development: a refurbished scope, LEDs, circuit boards, heat sinks etc.
In a humanitarian trip to Uganda in March of 2011, Medicine for Humanity, used our endoscopy to treat Vesicovaginal Fistula patients with great results. The treatment of two patients was made possible by evoCam (our endoscopic camera) and had it not been available the patients would have been turned away. In three other cases, evoCam was used for evaluation, sling/stent placement and for training of local physicians. However, the number of cases treated was limited by the absence of a dedicated light source. Mbarara university hospital had only one light source shared for all the operations. Moreover, during a power outage that occurred the physicians were not able to operate. Even though Evocam can work off a laptop battery, the hospital’s light-source used a socket. This trip refocused our priorities. Making a small, battery-enabled light-source to work with Evocam became our top priority. Now with the help of IDI, our light source is becoming a reality. We hope that soon, it too, would be put to good use by one of our NGO partners.

Image shows a 5mm Laproscope mounted on an evoCam prototype (photo taken by Bill Near)
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