Event Alert: Medical Technologies, Collaboration, and the New Entrepreneur

TiE is hosting a neat event at Boston University on health technology and how collaborative efforts have launched a generation of life saving products. More at TiE

Check it out tomorrow (register first) and hopefully I run into you.

Panelists

Kristian Olson, MD
Program Leader, Global Health Initiative, Center of Integration of
Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)

Aaron Sandoski, MBA
Managing Director, Norwich Ventures.

Barry Solomon, PhD
Founder, Circe Biomedical Inc.

P Laxminarain, MBA
Worldwide President, Codman, J&J.

Bernard Haffey, MBA
CEO, NDO Surgical.

Moderator
Jonathan Rosen PhD, MBA
Executive Director, Institute for Technology Entrepreneurship and
Commercialization (ITEC) , Boston University School of Management

When:
Monday, October 29, 2007: 6:30PM – 9:00PM
Networking & Dinner 6:30-7:00PM
Panel Discussion: 7:00-9:00PM

Where:
BU School of Management (4th Floor Executive Leadership Center)
595 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA ("B" Green Line Blanford Street Station)

Neat Stuff Round up

Interesresting read round up

Harvard Vaccines for the Poor --- Made in China
A WSJ piece on applications of the research of Dr. John J. Mekalanos who has struck a deal with a Chinese company, while ensuring access to developing countries.

Western Union and GSM Association are gearing up for mobile-to-mobile international money transfers

UNICEF video game simulates the realities of living in third world. A collabortion with Microsoft resulted in a game kids (and adults) can play to learn what it's really like to make ends meet in Haiti.


Check out the new World Bank channel on YouTube (I found this)

Bovine Innovations for Computing Power

A bovine innovation results in a hybrid power for the OLPC. The project's Arjun Sarwal reports that the group that's developing what was formerly known as the $100 Laptop (now it's called XO), is tooling around with a device that you can propel using cow-power. This is awesome. More at Engadget.

Design Challenge: Crutch purse, the LTDC version

You have a bad fall and all of sudden it becomes so awkward to carry your stuff (cell phone, wallet, laptop, way to many pens and notebooks, textbooks, mp3 player, charger). I am not even going to attempt to describe what our female audience carries but I understand it is often a study in complexity science.

So back the original problem---you're on the mend, and the way to carry your stuff is the Crutch Tote! I don't see room for textbooks, no biggie.

It's easy to see the same challenge apply to a head of household injured and now unable to carry the required items to work. I can live without my mp3 player and the rest of my junk for a few weeks, but if my daily livelihood depends on it, it stops being a matter of convenience.

So here's my challenge for readers who happen to be handy. Come up with a version of the Crutch Tote that addresses requirements for people on the mend who may have to carry items such as trade items, basic paperwork, medicines, and anything you think a citizen of the BOP may want to carry while they are on crutches. Affordable and sustainable design is paramount, as well as a strong sense of style. We'll see if we take it to the next level?

PopTech! 2007: Social Innovation Accelerator

In news about super cool conferences that I miss, NextBillion reports that the folks in Camden have launched a Social Innovation Accelerator.

Their website offers the following criteria, and will start with a software for HIV+ patients called LifeWindows.

The Accelerator evaluates projects which:

• Embody a highly-differentiated, innovative, multi-disciplinary and potentially world-changing approach to a consequential global problems
• Will benefit from the unique skills of the Pop!Tech network
• Have a high multiple of impact
• Amplify the skill-sets of the social innovators involved in doing the work
• Leverage a “bottom up” or extensible community of participants (through open-source licensing, for example)
• Engage the intended community’s participation in the solution
• Have a clear path to becoming a functioning enterprise
• Can be completed in 24-36 months

Sounds like a great concept following other notable efforts, we'll be following them closely to see what other initiatives they hatch.

Hat tip to NextBillion

More at PopTech! 2007

Have Loctite, Will Fix Tooth (Will not drill!)

(This one is so awesome that I'm going to post it Spanish, too)

This a real salute to all those bathroom surgeons and backyard mechanic trauma specialists, innovators of things like gasoline, the ultimate sterilizer, and alcohol swabs that go beyond the call of duty.

According to the WSJ, a group of maverick doctors in Bethlemen, PA, treated emergency room patients with acute tooth pain (I-haven't-been-to-the-dentists-in-months-pain-and-now-it-really-hurts-like-hell pain) not with fancy lasers, or ultrasound, or drills, but with superglue!

Okay, so you can't get it at Home Depot, because they don't sell Dermabond. However, the wound closure agent marketed by J&J is a close cousin of superglue and Krazy Glue. They share the key ingredient cyanoacrylate which performs the sticky magic.

...the only thing ER docs can usually do on the spot for patients with dental pain is to give them antibiotics and pain pills, which take hours to work and can be debilitating. He called Dermabond “superior to anything we can provide.”

Because it dries so fast, Dermabond doesn’t present a hazard, Hill said. But it’s only a temporary fix, until a patient can see a dentist. It falls out on its own in a few days. That may be a problem for some people, who wind up in the ER in the first place because they don’t have dental insurance and can’t afford to see the dentist.

More at WSJ