Sorry for the lack of posting recently I’ve been busy with different projects. I wanted to take this chance to explain the organization which I am apart of at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A number of engineers including myself have began an organization appropriately named MEDECAL (MEdical Devices for Emerging Countries Available for Low-cost). The Biomedical Engineering Department has been nice enough to grant us space in the department where we have set up shop. We are also working under the guidance of one of the best and brightest in the field of Medical Instrumentation, Dr. John G. Webster.
Last semester we had three seperate undergraduate teams working under our direction. Each of these groups began the design and development of three different low-cost medical devices: pulse oximeter, thermometer, and spirometer.
These groups were able to accomplish quite a bit, but the projects are continuing during this summer. A team of students from across the United States and a couple students from Lebanon (yes, the country of) have come to Madison to continue working on these medical devices over the summer. I hope too soon start posting some of the designs that we have began to come up with to get input into our designs.
Also please feel free to contact me in you are interested in helping out ono this project. Any engineers who are interested in learning please take a look at our supplemental training curriculum. This is a program one member of the MEDECAL team setup to assist students in the design and development process.
If anyone out there has an interesting problem or design project which they would like to be addressed please fill out this form. As I have stated previously I’m a member of the BME Projects Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We have a team of graduate and undergraduate engineers which are interested in working on different of design projects. Submissions will be evaluated and problems which have the largest potential for impact will be pursued, pending availability of resources.
Researchers at the University of Utah have been able to replicate technology commonly reserved for hard drives to test for infectious diseases; using the principle of giant magnetoresistance (GMR), which states that the electrical resistance of a particle will change when an external magnetic field is applied.
Using this technology, small samples of blood, urine, or saliva can be injected into a credit card sized device and infectious diseases have the potentional to be detected. This technology could further lead to increased point-of-care diagnostics with testing times on the order of minutes compared to hours.
Preliminary prototypes have shown that the technology is sensitive enough to detect 800 microscopic particles in a given sample. However researchers Marc Porter and Michael Granger believe with further modification single particles have the potential to be detected.
More can be found in the release here.
Early this year I had the chance to attend an entreprenurial seminar by George Whitesides at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He provided some very interesting advice to the startup entrepreneur (such as myself oneday). Included in this was a couple of homey words of advice, including making sure that each device you create “Solves a Problem”. I can not underestimate the importance of this. As this website continues to showcase inventions and innovative solutions, we have to ensure that we are solving a problem and displaying products that are going to become useful.
Another piece of advice that he gave was “Make simplicity an intimate business policy.” He has done exactly this with the creation of Paper Diagnostics. By combining microfluidics and one of the world most plentiful commodities–paper–Whitesides group has developed a method to test for infectious diseases using a single drop of blood or urine. When the sample is introduced microfluidics takes over and the sample is mixed with reagents which generates visable reactions. The results are then compared with a reference and a diagnosis is administered.
As I have stressed problems need to be intentified before proper solutions can be determined. I would like to provide this page (see above) to any medical practitioners (specifically from/or with experience in developing countries) who have identified problems in developing countries which need to be solved. Descriptions of the problem (could be anything) can be sent to me at admin@devcmd.com. Once collected I will reformat into a standard format, which will then be posted. Potential solutions will then be posted and discussed.
Projects have the potential to be submitted as design projects at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Biomedical Engineering Department.
Microscopes is a basic diagnostic tool which many hospitals in developing countries go without. Cellscope is a solution to which is accomplished through the exploitation of cell phones (noticing a trend?). The cellscope was developed by a team at Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC-Berkley.
By attaching approximately $75 worth of parts traditional cellular cameras can be have 5-50x zoom. This allows the abillity to have a clinical quality microscope for little overhead. The group is in prelimary stages, but they have however been able to obtain clinical quality images through this method. Also once collected images can be transmitted using the cellular technology to remote locations where clinicans can further analyze the data.
The Moca team at MIT has seemed to come up with an interesting application of telemedicine using the Google Android software platform. The Moca team was able to use the Google Android API to develop an application which allows medical practitioners to communicate to a central server through their mobile device. In the field, trained users collect data such as qualitative measurements, images, and voice descriptions. Once the data has been transferred users can:
1) Request a trained physican look at the data and make a decision.
2) Store the data in an OpenMRS database
This type of integration is the technology that is going to take medical care to the next level. I’ve been trying to find the open-source software platform, but I have not had any luck thus far. Hopefully more to come later.
In one of the coolest applications I have seen so far, researchers at the University of Washington-St. Louis have developed a USB compatible ultrasound probe which is able to connect to Windows mobile smartphones. The probe which seens to be on the order of $500 – $2,000 have the ability to connect to a PC or smartphone. Even more exciting is the fact that Professor Richard have made the probe available and are in the process of creating an open-source development package.
These are exactly the potential applications which have the potential to change the medical imaging landscape. I feel ultrasound is the tool of the future. Small, portable scanners will be the used by specialists to general practitioners EVERYWHERE. Therefore this technology has the potential to impact healthcare across the globe as the cost of ultrasound technology decreases.
See the official press release here.
Welcome everyone to devcmd.com! This website is devoted to medical technology which is being designed and developed for the developing world. I will be posts thoughts and links as it pertains to the medical technology in general, but with a major emphasis on medical technology for developing countries.
The healthcare landscape is changing and the developing countries have the potential to be at the forefront due to the lack of unnessecary regulation and ability to be versatile. Therefore this blog will focus on potentially disruptive technologies, such as open source platforms, mobile applications, and telemedicine.