InPrint is a lightweight, thin-film metal temporary tattoo that tracks tremors and drug usage for Parkinson’s patients. Parkinson’s is the second most common neurodegenerative disease and it can take up to six months for patients to find an effective drug regimen. Neurologists often change a patient’s treatment plan every two to three years due to the disease’s progression and have no way of accurately monitoring their symptoms during these transition periods. Applied onto the skin like a sticker, InPrint offers an accessible, low-cost method of detecting tremors while recording their duration and severity. By using the connected InPrint mobile app, patients can set medication reminders and input their drug intake while neurologists can evaluate patient symptoms to create a personalized medication schedule. Not only does InPrint make it easier to precisely monitor tremors, it can also shorten the six-month period typically needed to create a stable drug regimen.
Autonomic nervous system (ANS) disorders often go misdiagnosed or undiagnosed by physicians, especially in pediatric patients with less progressed pathologies. Delayed diagnosis exacerbates physiological and psychobehavioral symptoms associated with this class of diseases. AxoLog is a wearable screening tool catered to pediatric patients to allow for non-invasive and child-friendly diagnosis. The device employs electrodermal responses to quantitatively measure the nervous system response to a controlled clinical stimulus. With this device, we hope to reduce misdiagnosis in the short-term and lead to a reduction in physical and social implications for patients in the long term. Our device will create an impact in the clinical space by improving the diagnostic and treatment pathway for ANS disorders.
The HopeAssist project aims to develop a smartphone based decision support system using the WHO Mental Health Guidelines (mhGAP), that will facilitate General Physicians working in low resource settings, in making better diagnosis and treatment choices for depression patients. The system also includes a Interactive Voice Response (IVR) service that will allow patients to complete preliminary screening questionnaire on the phone at no cost. The pilot project is proposed for rolled out to 10 Physicians in Peshawar (Pakistan), to be tested over a period of 12 months. Based on conservative estimates, 5,500 patients suffering from depression will directly benefit from this pilot project in 08 months of service in this pilot project.
Post-partum haemorrhage (PPH) remains the leading cause of maternal death globally despite the significant increase in the number of available interventions. Marked peaks of mortality are recorded more in low resource countries. Team Medzyn’s design solution is a first aid device whose key role is to preserve the mother’s life during referrals or transportation to the health facility. The inflatable first aid haemorrhage belt will be able to stem the bleeding of a haemorrhaging mother. The design is based on the manual external aortic compression technique by a qualified attendant. The belt is to be strapped around the mother as a first aid device to reduce the blood loss and thus increasing the chances of maternal survival. The overall aim is to create an efficient and safe device that is affordable to be adopted in low resource settings as a leading lifesaving first aid.
The US egg industry generates roughly 44,000 tons of poultry manure every day. This waste is a significant contributor to water and air quality pollution. As the egg industry is concentrated in localized regions around the country, current manure management strategies have led to over-fertilization of nearby cropland. To avoid these problems, OrganicMatters dries manure at the site of poultry production to maximize nutrient preservation. Dry manure is then transported to a central facility where it is processed into a stable pellet that can easily integrate into the existing fertilizer market. OrganicMatters can increase the feasibility of manure use as a fertilizer for organic farmers. Our product can meet the demand of diverse agricultural customers across a wide range of crops and applications. Appropriately dried poultry manure is a very balanced, high nutrient fertilizer that satisfies both conventional agriculture and the organic sector.
Access to clean water is a luxury many of us take for granted. Yet, millions of people worldwide are not so lucky. Our team will use existing infrastructure and familiarity with solar technologies, off-grid, bio-inspired desalination through synthetic transpiration to help enable the provision of clean water access to nearly 75 million households in India alone. Synthetic transpiration is a bio-inspired desalination technology that requires no external energy inputs besides sunlight. Mimicking water transport mechanisms found in mangrove trees, this technology uses sunlight to induce water evaporation, which serves as the driving force for filtration. Evaporated water is then condensed as drinkable water. The technology is enhanced by the use of graphene-oxide based nanomaterials that increase evaporation rates and augment passive water transport throughout the technology. This technology is being implemented in southern India to combat groundwater salinization that is causing widespread hypertension throughout urban areas.
Three-year-old Alan lying face down on the shore of the Mediterranean has become the iconic photograph of the Syrian refugee crisis. Photography and visual art are powerful and universal tools to foster human-to-human connection. Through partnerships with aid organizations permanently working in refugee camps, DepArt facilitates art workshops and the flow of art supplies into refugee camps in Greece. DepArt then connects refugee artists via mobile phone to a central online platform, through which they can digitize and publicize their art, find mentors and sponsors, and make their work visible to large-scale audiences. Furthermore, the online platform facilitates the buying and selling of refugee art. This model not only encourages art as a constructive tool for self-expression, but also connects refugees to a global marketplace. Finally, the spread of refugee art will increase the global community’s exposure to the refugee crisis.
The information obtained from listening to lung sounds using a microphone is limited. In order to reveal lung capacity and identify the different fluids that may be in a patient’s lungs, Mama-OPE is building upon software developed to analyze data and aid in the diagnosis of lung diseases. Health workers demonstrated the need to know the severity of diseases using the same device. In a statement about the product, a health worker at Mulago hospital said, “One of the most important things I first find out about the pneumonia patient is if they need oxygen supplementation or not and it would be great if I [could] get that using your same device.” Mama-OPE’s product will be able to detect oxygen saturation in the blood based on calorimetric principle.
Through Kids Write, Haitian students in grades 1 to 4 can grow their literacy skills by reading and writing in their mother-tongue language, Haitian Creole, for 30 to 45 minutes every day. Students use tablets to download and read books from a digital library, and to write their own books. Kids Write provides training and support to these students. The project also shares exemplary student work between schools. To increase access, Kids Write loans equipment to schools and offers them a one year trial to decide whether they want to continue with the program before they start paying for equipment. Parents at participating schools pay a small fee of $6.21 per year. A recent pilot of the program found that it increased reading scores by 0.8 standard deviations, or 10 correct words per minute.
