Savvy Avi

I think I work pretty hard with a demanding job at Jumptap, EvoTech in the evenings and weekends and being a new father. Then I met the 2012 System Design and Management (SDM) students in “boot camp” and was reminded that one can be even busier. A team of SDM students worked on EvoTech in their design challenge 2 assignments. We asked them to focus on EvoCloud a telemedicine offering we want to pair with our endoscopy camera. They came up with interesting findings: possible NGOs to contact, connections to telemedicine player in India, evaluation of 3G coverage and quality in Africa, a mockup and a fresh look at a new market. In the picture below SDM fellows presenting their work on EvoTech (left to right): Steve Ajemain, Bhushan Desam, Mike Meyer, Sascha Boehme, Andy Campanella, Rajesh Nair, Jake Whitcomb.

IDEO.org , IDEO’s branch for social venture work, has chosen Evotech for a 5 week project. We have a talented team: a mechanical engineer, a designer and a management consultant, working to improve EvoCam’s design and market strategy. It’s a great show of confidence for Evotech, and will no doubt improve our readiness to go to market. Read more in IDEO’s blog post . Working on Evotech part-time, progress comes slow. For every grant, business opportunity or competition won, we’ve lost at least two. However, so far, every achievement is several times bigger than the one before it, and that means we are moving in the right direction.

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 bo...

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...