LTDC is now 1.

One year ago this week we started Little Devices That Could to simply exchange information between friends who follow and practice the convergence of international development, health technology, and entrepreneurship.

After 2 or 3 posts, we noticed that many (all 99 countries of you) of you were actually reading (prompting us to check our grammar) the blog on a regular basis.

What started out as a very informal experiment has evolved into a wonderful online experience that includes fascinating technologies. Their impact is surpassed only by the amazing people behind them that make it possible despite all odds. The unexpected surprise for us is the real treat in meeting many of them and realizing that there is a great peer group looking at the world through a similar lens.

I am still not versed in all the blogsphere's jargon. For all those folks who added us to their blogrolls, THANK YOU! Special hats off to Anne, Christine, Cat and Aman!

We're looking towards new opportunities and excellent devices in the next few weeks! Thanks for staying on the LTDC channel, we hope to keep those RSS feeds happy!

On behalf of LTDC, we wish you and yours a safe and Happy Holidays!

LTDC Goes to Graduate School: Harvard-MIT announce HST 939, Designing and Sustaining Technology Innovation for Global Health

Following a long history at MIT of incredible classes like D-Lab, Developmental Entrepreneurship and S-Lab from Sloan School of Management,the joint program in Health and Technology by Harvard and MIT have announced HST 939: Designing and Sustaining Technology Innovation for Global Health. The class will focus on exploring new ways and avenues of answering global health's most vexing problems at the intersection of business, public health, and disruptive technologies. Hands on participation in real life projects with international community and corporate partners will allow students to experience global health development 2.0 from the start.

The class is the brainchild of HST affiliate Jeff Blander, a social entrepeneur and global health expert, who teamed up with Utkan Demirci, a scientist and inventor at Harvard with a shared focus on global health technologies. Your Truly will participate in the design and instruction of the technology and bottom-up innovation aspects of the class. If my posts have been infrequent lately, I apologize, but the there has been a lot of work to set up some exciting projects which I will be sharing with you shortly.

We are continuing to receive a lot of interest from corporate and foundation sponsors about their own projects and the door is open for continuing collaboration. One of the most exciting aspects of the course is its commitment to cross-institutional collaboration. The current partners include companies, NGOs, and other academic institutions beyond Harvard and MIT. So get ready, in a few months, we'll be highlighting the next little devices that could---and the business report cards that go along with them! Everything starts in Spring 2008, but you can submit your projects now!