DevC, MD: Medical Solutions for Developing Countries

Welcome all of the new users which have joined the past week. Its been a pleasure getting to know all of you.

I’m proud to present an official collaboration between the Indian Biomedical Engineers and Technologists Association and DevC,MD.com. It is a pleasure having you onboard.  If you have any additional questions about the association please contact Chintak Dholakia at chintakdholakia@gmail.com.

If you had a chance to login to the ProjectPier platform you will see the new projects which are being added.  Many of these projects are excellent places to get started developing in the community.  Some projects which need some immediate help are:

• Writing blog reports for devcmd.com-DevC, MD started as a blogging site which emphasized medical solutions for developing countries.  As I have continued to work on other aspects of the website I need some help continuing this.  There are new solutions/products which I have posted in the ProjectPier (under the project “New to devcmd” project).
• Creating Printed Circuit Board Layouts-  Anyone that is interested in electrical engineering and has access to Eagle Layout Editor.  This would be a great opportunity to get familiar with the software package as well as helping with building the pulse oximeter and spirometer.

Also some updates on the pulse oximeter and spirometer development:

Pulse Oximeter

• The first verision of the schematic has been completed.  Once a PCB layout is done we will be able to start testing the inital prototype
• Internship team has been working this summer on developing the algorithms which will be used for acquiring SpO2 data.  They have developed this algorithm in MATLAB, but they are now working on implementing in C (which will be loaded onto a microcontroller).

Spirometer

• Team of University of Wisconsin-Madison Biomedical engineers is developing the hardware for the spirometer.  They have recently created a Fleisch design.
• Amit Nimunkar will be working on creating the electrical hardware design which will be used to acquire data from the spirometer and send the data over USB.
• Team of interns is working on creating algorithms which will be used in analyze spirometer data.  The team is working to comply with ATS Standards.  Currently the algorithms have been implemented in MATLAB, now the team is working to implement in JAVA.  The JAVA platform will serve as the GUI (graphical user interface) for the USB based spirometer.

Finally continue to contribute to the website.  Take a look at the task lists for projects see what you think.  Please send me any questions you have.

The DevC, MD community is rapidly growing and you are encouraged to participate in the development of all products. By working on an open-source platform, the DevC, MD team will be able to make healthcare accessible throughout the world.

In order to create a structure that will assist in the development, I have recently installed an application, Project Pier, which will help us manage the collaboration. To create an account sign-up here.  This platform allows for To-Do lists, messaging, and file uploading which will all be very useful once everyone get working together.  I encourage everyone to sign-up today!