Designing Health Devices for Developing Countries

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Designing Health Devices for Developing Countries

careinnovators | January 25, 2010 - Leave a Comment

Companies	Engineering World Health
Industries	Nonprofit Medical Devices

Slight changes to existing technology can transform an item currently unusable in a developing country into a helpful and functional health device. That’s the idea behind Engineering World Health (EWH). The NGO conducts research in developing countries in order to understand the health challenges, identify technology needs, and summarize the challenges into an annual list called Projects that Matter. Engineers with local EWH chapters submit their design solutions to the EWH headquarters in order to compete for grant money to build a prototype. Successful designs can lead to field tests and eventual distribution in the developing world. EWH stresses that solutions be “appropriate” – that is, developing countries require technologies that are affordable, simple to maintain, and can be repaired with locally available parts, so solutions must reflect those factors. As an example, the Berkeley EWH chapter held “build parties” and designed a portable vaccine refrigerator with a backup source of power.

Any thoughts on this idea? Are you involved with EWH? We’d love to hear about your projects and the health challenge they address.