Simple Breath Counter to Combat Pneumonia

From our friends at Global Health Ideas, a new find for a live saving device---a breath counter.

healthcare + design award: fighting pneumonia in remote areas: "

I just discovered an interesting blog: healthcare + design and they had this post up on design excellence awards. Not sure how much this Breath Counter costs, but worth investigating further:

“Fighting Pneumonia: Breath Counter The Breath Counter is a simple, effective testing device to help detect pneumonia in children under five, living in remote areas in developing countries. Pneumonia is the number one cause of death in the under five worldwide, killing an average of two million each year. ”

Philanthropy by Design

“The Breath Counter was created within Philips Design’s Philanthropy by Design program, established in 2005 in which, together with partners such as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), public bodies and social players with complementary expertise and values, Philips Design donates its creative expertise and socio-cultural knowledge to create solutions to improve the health and environment of the more fragile categories of the world’s developing societies.”

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Medical Innovation in Nicaragua

The IADB is supporting our project in Nicaragua for an appropriate biomedical innovation cluster. We are deploying a number of learning kits so that local inventors, physicians, engineers, and public health personnel can develop their next little devices that could. I'll try to cross post as much as I can, but otherwise, please visit the team blog at http://iihnicaragua.wordpress.com

$10 Medical Simulation

No, it’s not OPERATION, but it take a few cues from it. We simple breadboard circuit to create a basic platform for a medical probe simulator. You can use any time of instrument but we started with a syringe (we’re trying to get a biopsy needle). Some tin for conductive leads placed in our tissue simulator and some emdedded anatomical structures provide signals to a circuit tied to a webcam that sounds an alarm if a wrong path in the “intervention” has taken place.

Our idea is to let the doctors and healthcare workers decide what type of instrument and procedure they want to simulate. We’re providing the electronic and mechanical tools for it.