Skip to main content

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)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SDM from up on the bridge

I am taking the first spring semester as a long distance student in MIT's System Design and Managment (SDM) program. The long distance option, which I am grateful for, poses some challenges. A month into the semester, I am still trying to improve the interaction with the classroom, faculty and fellow students and maintain a balance between school and work. Setting up a work station I am using my home office (/living room /dining room/ guest sofa) from which I connect to the ‘bridge’. I find it useful to work with two screens. One displays the class, the mike controls and my video (I want to see how I appear to people looking at me from the classroom). The other displays the presentation slides and notebook (OneNote). The webcam is positioned above the main screen and when I look at the other screen, I am not facing the webcam. Class participation The video and sound quality are good. Material is always available before hand on the web. So keeping up with the studies is eas...
3 comments
Read more

Frugal Innovation in Healthcare

I have been working on EVOCAM a low cost endoscopy system with my partners at Evolving Technologies. Using frugal innovation techniques we developed a light, portable endoscopy prototype for a fraction of the price of existing solutions. Recently Medicine for Humanity physicians used our system to operate in Uganda. To allow training to continue from afar, after volunteer physicians returned home, we are planning to add a tele-medical feature to our device. I joined the team after they already had a working prototype and focused on market research, creating a concise massage and preparing a parametric engineering evaluation that exemplifies how EVOTECH is positioned in the market place. Basically everything it takes to turn a good idea into a good business plan. I am currently working rendering another EVOCAM out of MIT’s hobby machine shop. Together we took EVOTECH into MIT’s $100K business plan semi-finals (still competing) and to a bunch of other competitions in MIT and out...
6 comments
Read more

10 Recommended Readings on Business and Policy

Piles of business and policy books are published every year. While almost any book has something worthwhile in it, only a small fraction are good. And for every profound idea there is a load of simplifications, unbiased assertions, after the fact reasoning and hype. When considering what to read I know what to avoid. For starters, I’d avoid anything with a title similar to this blog title – anything with a number in it: “365 days of success”, “8 new roles of money” (from the Kiyosaki who brought us rich dad poor dad) or “101 ways to turn your business around”. I also avoid biographies and autobiographies. They tend to present a simplified view where the fortunes of companies and nations are over attributed to one person. This view is misleading and even dangerous when people start believing in saviors and messiahs . Autobiographies have all the flaws of biographies and they are also biased and are too often just pure narcissism. Finally, I won’t read a book about a company written f...
3 comments
Read more