This year, the PedalTap team is taking this Big Idea to another level. The innovative Tippy Tap was made to prevent the spread of infection at communal hand washing facilities in rural areas in Uganda. It is foot-operated, preventing the need for touch. The product is a free-standing, universally-fitting connection that can easily attach to any tap. It is operated by a foot pedal, which is made of a bicycle brake handle and system connected to a spring-loaded water cut off. It is very cheap, easy to produce, and simple to connect. It is also easy to use and water flow can be controlled. It is particularly good for use in communal and crowded spaces. The Tippy Tap builds on existing infrastructure, so there will no extra costs incurred.
SHRI works alongside communities in rural India to increase access to essential health infrastructure by providing access to toilets that are able to convert waste into energy that runs a water filtration system. SHRI will sell safe drinking water at a fair price to generate revenue. This project aims to end open defecation by encouraging behavior change and positive health outcomes through education. Partnerships with local governments will ensure that allocated land and funding goes to those most in need of these services.
Developing countries have a dire need for measuring the respiratory health of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. Spirometry is the gold standard in developed countries for diagnosing respiratory illnesses. However, spirometers are costly and require a reliable power supply, regular maintenance, and a computer for operation. All of these requirements are unmet by the environment of most developing countries. Project FloGlow: A Low-Cost Spirometer addresses this need by developing a spirometer specifically for low-resource clinics and solving key problems existing spirometers fail to address. FloGlow operates without the aid of a PC or smartphone, possesses on-board data storage and display, and allows simple and accurate calibration—all for less than $35. This device has the potential to reduce misdiagnosed cases and provides clinicians the ability to improve management of both the symptoms and the disease to reduce preventable morbidity and mortality.
Viral load testing is increasingly supported as a necessary component of the HIV management cycle. Regular monitoring for treatment failure by a viral load test is endorsed by the World Health Organization as essential to a globally sustainable treatment plan. Tijuana has been identified as the potential site of an HIV epidemic due to both its rising incidence of HIV cases and to its disproportionately large populations of high-risk sex workers and intravenous drug users. A novel detection system called VIRA has been developed to make the viral load test financially and logistically feasible for Tijuana health clinics to incorporate into their treatment and containment strategies. VIRA combines a low-cost centrifuge, automated RNA extraction device, paper-based genetic circuit, and smartphone-based photometric quantification system to yield a fast, easy, and inexpensive point-of- care viral load test which may be implemented in Tijuana and readily adapted to other low-resource settings.
The Open Viral Load project aims to develop an open-source, affordable genetic assay test for HIV that can be easily modified to test other pathogenic diseases, such as tuberculosis and the Zika virus. As part of the Global TIES organization, the Open Viral Load team is working with both the UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique. The team will perform preliminary testing in Tijuana, Mexico, followed by secondary testing in Mozambique. This project will allow low resource communities to receive the regular testing they need in order to know the status of their viral disease or to quickly diagnose patients with other pathogenic illnesses. This in turn will help doctors issue proper treatment to those in their community.
According to the UN Environment Programme, roughly one third of the food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted. Simultaneously, forage fish stocks, which are a key component of the oceanic lifecycle, are declining due to overfishing. They are being harvested to be processed into fishmeal, which feed the aquaculture boom and livestock. Black soldier fly larvae are capable of feeding on waste and efficiently creating both the protein and fat necessary to meet nutritional requirements of feed operations. If a mere 6% of the food waste were converted into bug protein, it would offset 100% of the need for forage fish. The potential for impact is massive. Bug Ideas aims to centralize currently disjointed efforts and expedite FDA approval of insects as feed. The team will accomplish this objective by building a coalition of experts, founding a trade association of companies, and submitting an application for FDA approval.
The Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) project is the future of the next generation’s agricultural gadgets. Instead of the past’s archaic methods of manually searching for leaks with acoustic procedures, the UGV project hopes to replace the previous methods with a more strategic appliance – a powerful camera attached onto a fully autonomous vehicle. Utilizing a combination of dynamic image-processing techniques and mobilization, this rover-camera duo is able to autonomously navigate through way-points and detect pipe leaks more frequently, efficiently, and accurately than a field worker would. Powered and guided by the Mission Planner program and the Pixhawk Autopilot System, the rover is capable of decreasing overhead costs, and most importantly, aiding in the preservation of water. The project’s state of the art features are distinguished by its data collection platform, algorithm design, and user-friendly interface.
70% of the world’s poor are smallholder farmers, and they produce 80% of the global food. However, these farmers are poor and food insecure. By 2050, the world will need to produce at least 50% more food to feed 9 billion people. This dual-pronged problem of poverty and food insecurity is caused by 3 main issues in agricultural value chains: supply chain inefficiencies, financial exclusion, and information asymmetry. Ricult is solving these issues by establishing a multi-sided, mobile e-commerce platform that fills the holes in the agricultural supply chain by providing farmers direct access to financial instruments, input sellers, end buyers, logistics providers, and real-time crop information. As 80% of the smallholder farmers have access to mobile phones, Ricult’s solution is accessible through both low cost feature phones without Internet connections and smartphones.
Just Ripe takes serving food to a whole new level. Just Ripe’s products—soups, salads, and smoothies all created from 100% recovered, organic produce — will be pedaled around Oakland’s streets on an innovative, eye-catching food bike. The team aims to hold daily “kickstands,” or food bike sales, at Downtown Oakland tech companies to sell products to young professionals at prices between $6-$10. In addition, Just Ripe will distribute refreshing smoothies to Oakland middle schools and high schools free of charge in order to promote healthy eating while spreading the message: “Don’t DiscriminEAT.” Just Ripe’s food bike allows convenient transportation of products through an innovative, low-cost, mobile, and environmentally-friendly alternative to a food truck. The team’s passion for healthy food and their dedication to making a lasting impact inspired this quirky food bike which aims to initiate a dialogue around food waste and food access in Oakland by “Pedaling with a Purpose.”
