Welcome! We like gadgets. We like international development. We really like medical technology.
Steve Hoefer (a fantastic maker who I interviewed on the Make: Talk podcast earlier this week) has come up with a great way to clearly mark his tools so they don't get lost when he brings them to a hackerspace.
I also work at community workshops quite a bit, and while they often have a lot of tools around I sometimes like to bring my own. (Especially drill bits which seem to always be dull and in exactly the wrong size.) It’s best if my tools don’t mix with theirs.
And finally, tools add up to be a pretty bing investment, they sometimes like to get themselves stolen. It’s good to mark them in a way that might prevent that or aid in their recovery if they are.
So, some identifying marks are in order. There are really two different things going on here, immediate identification, to separate your tools from others, and post-theft ID, to identify the tools as your own.
Steve Hoefer shows how to mark your tools for easy identification
Funding international engineering projects can be tricky, but the private sector has evolved some tactics that work. There are hundreds of private-sector funding opportunities available – competitions, grants, crowd-funding and others – many of which are documented here on E4C. Between businesses, foundations and charitable individuals, the private sector nimbly provides billions of dollars in funding. Unfortunately, despite the size of this funding pool, the competition is fierce.
"Innovation can’t happen without accepting the risk that it might fail. The vast and radical innovations of the mid-20th century took place in a world that, in retrospect, looks insanely dangerous and unstable. Possible outcomes that the modern mind identifies as serious risks might not have been taken seriously — supposing they were noticed at all — by people habituated to the Depression, the World Wars, and the Cold War, in times when seat belts, antibiotics, and many vaccines did not exist. "
From early on, I came across a frequent disconnect between the entrepreneurs in the space and some of the space’s institutional leadership. One of the first people I hired as a consultant to help in my business’s development had just closed up shop on her own social venture for lack of investment. When I told her the reason I was going down this path was in part because I had been assured there was much more funding available than in the charitable space, she scoffed and told me not to believe it. “There is hardly any money to be found,” she reflected bitterly.
More recently, when I mentioned to the co-founder of one of the most respected networks in the space that I was not seeing a lot of early stage money, he fervently contradicted me: “There’s tons of money available!”
"Most investment funds that have been set up in the social/impact spaces (i.e. Impact50) are focused on mezzanine and growth stage investments (in other words: if you are already making money, we may invest our money; if you are not, then you are too early)"
"Innovation can’t happen without accepting the risk that it might fail. The vast and radical innovations of the mid-20th century took place in a world that, in retrospect, looks insanely dangerous and unstable. Possible outcomes that the modern mind identifies as serious risks might not have been taken seriously — supposing they were noticed at all — by people habituated to the Depression, the World Wars, and the Cold War, in times when seat belts, antibiotics, and many vaccines did not exist. "
So the challenge in Ocotal, Nicaragua was to make an IV alarm using locally available materials. Toys were abundant, cheap, and easily hackable. The video it best.
MEDIKit Nicaragua Jan-Feb 2011, a set on Flickr.
Rachel Glennerster and Michael Kremer point out that interventions in health and education need to complement much more complex machinery: human behavior. They are right. And their argument can go a step further. Engaging local stakeholders in the design of policies and solutions can boost the innovative behavior of the people whose well-being we evaluate.
At MIT’s D-Lab we believe that users in the developing world have the potential to be the everyday inventors of their own solutions. In a Nicaraguan hospital, a nurse might quietly create neonatal UV protectors from layers of surgical gauze. Around the corner in the operating room, surgeons can be found trading sutures for fishing line and drainage valves for cut-up soda bottles that work just as well. These inventive behaviors are often hidden. The designs are remaches, geuzas, improvisations, hacks. Not exactly the stuff of professional associations. This is only because they lack the last bit of formal engineering that makes them appear the brilliant solutions they in fact are.
Traditionally, technology designers who focus on the developing world try to create affordable solutions adaptable to the local environment. They might develop efficient water pumps that run on pedal power, cell phones with longer ranges and smarter features, and syringes that are safer and more accessible, with retractable needles that automatically disable them. Our approach is to encourage co-creation in the design process: we want to empower locals to invent, so they can be collaborators, not just clients. In our fieldwork we teach students to look for inventive behaviors, and many of our interventions have originated with users. Cultivating inventiveness and the tools of invention among the poor is our priority.
Researchers at the University of Illinois have created a silver-inked rollerball pen to write out electrical circuits.
Our group is divided into three main sub-groups with a rich and overlapping set of interests:
(1) Complex Fluids - We investigate the phase behavior, structure, and rheology of colloidal suspensions using a broad array of techniques, including light scattering, rheological measurements, in situ drying stress measurements, and direct visualization approaches, such as confocal microscopy and high speed imaging. Our current focus includes microsphere-nanoparticle mixtures, biphasic colloid mixtures, colloid-filled hydrogels, polyelectrolyte complexes, and photoresponsive colloid systems.
(2) Colloidal Assembly - We employ directed assembly approaches including colloidal epitaxy, evaporative lithography, and microfluidic devices to create precisely patterned colloidal films, granules, and other 3D forms.
(3) Direct Ink Writing - We are designing novel inks for direct-write assembly of planar and 3-D structures with locally tailored composition and architecture. A myriad of ink designs are under development, including colloidal, nanoparticle, fugitive organic, polyelectrolyte and sol-gel inks. Complex 3D structures h ave been produced with minimum feature sizes ranging from ~ 0.2 µm to 300 µm
From Hackaday:
Researchers at the University of Delaware are helping disabled kids by designing robot transportation for them. Exploring one’s environment is an important part of early development. Disabilities that limit mobility can prevent young children from experiencing this. Typically children are not offered a powered wheelchair until they are five or six years old, but adding intelligent technologies, like those found in the UD1, makes this possible at a much younger age. Proximity sensors all around the drive unit of the robot add obstacle avoidance and ensure safety when used around other children. When confronted with an obstacle the UD1 will stop, or navigate around it. The unit is controlled by a joystick in front of the rider but it can also be overridden remotely by a teacher, parent, or caregiver.
[via Robot Gossip]
Designer Jihye Lee proposes a different look for blood collection bags featuring a more solid construction, large labeling of blood type, and a look as though it's meant for sale on 5th Avenue.
different objects like prosthetics, medical devices and even houses! Excellent article in today's New York Times about the varied applications and players involved in this exciting new arena.
