The Solarclave, a Solar-Powered Medical Instrument Sterilizer

https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/2011/01/11/how_to_sterilize_medical_instruments_in_off_grid_clinics.html

The Solarclave, a Solar-Powered Medical Instrument Sterilizer

Microbes are survivors. To kill them, the scissors, tweezers, scalpels and other medical instruments used in routine treatment and exams need to be sterilized with heat and pressure. Hospitals usually do the work with large autoclaves that are too expensive for rural health posts in developing countries. To solve the problem, Anna Young, at MIT's D-Lab, is developing a solar-powered sterilizer called Solarclave.

The Solarclave is a bulky kluge of repurposed parts. A reflective satellite-TV dish focuses sunlight onto a modified wine bottle above it. The sunlight heats water in the bottle and forces steam into a pressure cooker below. In field tests in Nicaragua, the Solarclave can reach the CDC-recommended heat and pressure levels—250 F at 15 psi—in an hour.

Read more: 7 Medical Device Upgrades for Developing Countries - Popular Mechanics 

DIY ECG Pads

DIY ECG Pads

ECG machines measure changes in skin surface potentials to monitor the heart rate. The pads and conductive gel are not expensive in the West, but supplies may be spotty in rural developing areas. To equip those health posts and raise awareness in the States, Engineering World Health, a healthcare technology provider, hit on the idea for these DIY pads made from bottle-cap liners and buttons.

How to make the pads: 1. Boil beer or soda bottle caps in water for 30 minutes, then peel off the rubber lining from the bottom. 2. Cut an "X" in the center of the pad and insert a nickel-plated brass sewing snap through the hole. That's your pad.

How to make conductive gel: 1. In a glass bottle, mix one cup of water with two tablespoons of salt. 2. Add one cup of flour and mix. 3. Make it hygienic with a drop of bleach.

Read more: 7 Medical Device Upgrades for Developing Countries - Popular Mechanics 

Fake Drug Spotting System

mPedigree, a Fake Drug Spotting System Via Text Message

To fight drug counterfeiters, manufacturers have tried integrating holograms onto their labels and, more recently, RFID tags. But those methods are too costly for distributors in the poorest countries. One company has a simpler solution: mPedigree has matched cellphones and cloud computing with unique 10-digit codes on each package. The result is a drug verification service that’s as elegant as it is cheap.

Manufacturers tag their products with a code that consumers can enter into their cellphones and send via SMS for free. The consumer will get a "yes" or "no" response indicating the trustworthiness of the medicine.

This year, mPedigree is working with Hewlett-Packard, a handful of the biggest international pharmaceutical corporations and other major players to expand the program from its pilot site in Ghana to Nigeria and later Kenya and Tanzania. Tests began with antimalarial drugs, and will expand to include stomach parasite killers, painkillers and others.

A solution like this was badly needed.

Read more: 7 Medical Device Upgrades for Developing Countries - Popular Mechanics 

Leveraged Wheelchair

The Leveraged Wheelchair

Wheelchair users in developing countries often need chairs that work on rough roads. They can't afford the gear-shifting designs like Adaptive Sportsman's Renegade or Invacare's handcycles, however, that can cost from $2000 to $5000. Until now. Amos Winter founded MIT's Mobility Lab and has created a leveraged-chair design that gives varying degrees of power for off-road rolling and has a narrow wheelbase for comfort indoors. And it costs only $200.

Users effectively "switch gears" by moving their hands up or down on levers that rise from the side wheels for more leverage and more speed. The MIT team figures that, on pavement, their drivetrain gives 10 to 20 percent more speed than a traditional chair, and off-road, they say, it's unequaled. First-generation designs underwent field tests in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in 2009, and second-generation designs have been in the field in Guatemala since August.

Read more: 7 Medical Device Upgrades for Developing Countries - Popular Mechanics 

Knee Replacement: super cheap for those that cant afford it

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/med-tech/7-medical-upgrades-for-developing-countries#fbIndex2

http://www.d-rev.org/projects/remotion.html

Rugged, Affordable Knee Replacements

High-tech prosthetic limbs can cost as much as $100,000.

For above-the-knee leg amputees who can't afford that kind of high-tech hardware, Re:Motion and a handful of other enterprises design cheap, durable prostheses. Re:Motion's Jairpurknee is field-proven to work even in humid tropical climates and muddy fields and on dusty roads. It's made of only five plastic pieces and four fasteners that are easy to mass-produce and assemble, and, when it goes to market in India, will cost only $20.

In spite of that simplicity, the knee is apparently an upgrade over its cheap prosthetic competition on the market now. Jaipurknee is polycentric, rather than hinged, so that it can move in multiple directions, more like the flesh and bone that it replaces. Its design aims for stability and efficiency in the step, and it has been field tested with more than 1300 patients.

Read more: 7 Medical Device Upgrades for Developing Countries - Popular Mechanics 

Battery: electricity made from bacteria

Simple domestic battery idea for poor countries and rural areas using bacteria eating cycles to make power:

   http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/biofuel/4332914

   For a century, scientists have known that a trickle of electricity could be harvested from the metabolic reactions of bacteria living in soil. To most scientists, it was a parlor trick--a lot of effort to generate a tiny current. Now, a team at Harvard called Lebone has used the idea to design an inexpensive battery for use in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 500 million people live without power. The microbial fuel cell, or MFC, can produce enough current to power LED lights and charge cellphone batteries. 

APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY:MICROBIAL FUEL CELL

INNOVATORS: Aviva Presser Aiden, Alexander Fabry, Stephen Lwendo, David Sengeh, Zoë Vallabha, Hugo Van Vuuren; Lebone BRILLIANT IDEA: A bacteria-powered battery to help Africans light their homes.

In 2008, Lebone (the word means "light stick" in southern Africa's Sotho language) field-tested its first prototype in Tanzania, the home country of team member Stephen Lwendo. Simple and cheap, the MFC came in a 5-gallon bucket. It consisted of a graphite-cloth anode, a chicken-wire cathode, manure-rich mud for fuel, a layer of sand to act as an ion barrier and salt water as an electrolyte--all attached to an electronic power-management board. In June 2009, team members traveled to Namibia to launch a pilot program featuring 100 MFCs made from small canvas bags that can be linked for increased voltage. The bags are filled with dirt and buried. When watered to keep the microbes munching, the buried cells can produce power for months. "Rural Africans are used to getting resources out of the ground," says team member Aviva Presser Aiden, a doctoral student in applied math and genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "We want to tap that familiarity." 

TAGS: inventions, batteries, bacteria, breakthrough awards, bacteria battery

Read more: 10 Most Brilliant Innovators of 2009: Bacteria-Powered Battery - Popular Mechanics 

Nebulizer for respiratory therapy: pedal powered air pressure

Nebulizer for respiratory therapy: pedal powered air pressure
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OyMJy3N99k