Every year cervical cancer causes 275,000 deaths worldwide. Screening for cervical cancer significantly reduces this mortality rate, given that most cervical cancer cases caught early are treatable. Visual inspection of the cervix with acetic acid (VIA) is a low-cost and effective method to screen for cervical cancer. VIA is not widely used, however, due to a lack of training and awareness of the method. With proper training and follow-up, VIA can avert 68% of cervical cancer related deaths; thus saving an estimated 150,000 lives in low and lower-middle income countries. The aim of this project is to design and implement a trainer and training program to teach VIA to midwives in Ghana, implementing three phases. Phase 0, which has already been completed, was to develop a low-cost, low-fidelity simulator to assist in training of midwives on VIA. Phase 1 is to develop an implementation plan to launch this program in Ghana and begin training a small group of midwives over the next year. Phase 2 will leverage the initial target group of midwifery students and train them to teach VIA to other midwives in Ghana. This allows more women to get screened for cervical cancer and detect pre-cancerous cells early, thus allowing these women to get the treatment they need to save their lives.
University: UC Berkeley
The Somo Project
The Somo Project’s mission is to identify, train, fund and mentor entrepreneurs looking to drive social change by building enterprises in their own low-income urban communities. This project seeks out talented individuals with vision, drive and a concrete plan to change their communities from within. Focusing on taking a long-term, investment-focused approach, the project will identify focus areas that have long-term importance to a community, such as health, education and the environment. The project will identify and build partnerships with local grassroots leaders to establish Somo’s presence and local platform. The project aims to prudently allocate capital and mitigate risk by seeking partnerships with only a limited number of excellent entrepreneurs (5 -15) in each start-up class. The focus is simple: seek entrepreneurs who can build sustainable, socially focused franchises, and who have a long runway of growth ahead of them.
(Note: This project originally won in the Big Ideas “Conflict & Development” Category)
A Novel Approach to Remediate Groundwater Fluoride Contamination in Nalgonda, India
Globally, 200 million people are at risk of developing dental/skeletal fluorosis by drinking groundwater containing toxic levels of fluoride that surpass the WHO limit. Although many defluoridation technologies have proven to be effective in labs, most are technologically and/or culturally inappropriate for remote rural areas like Nalgonda, India. Given the pressing need for a more sustainable removal method, this project proposes to: I) use raw bauxite ore to develop a defluoridation technology that is locally sourced and affordable, highly effective, culturally appropriate, technically feasible, robust, and requires minimal operation/maintenance, and II) design business models based on successes and failures of previous services targeted at low-income users to provide a reliable source of defluoridated water at an incremental price that encourages user uptake.
Equa
In times of drought, reducing water use is crucial. The product, Equa, will raise awareness by collecting and displaying real-time data during showers to inform users of their water consumption. Easily attached to a shower wall, Equa displays real-time user data including temperature, liters of water used, and carbon dioxide emissions that are based off of how much energy is being used to heat the water so that the person in the shower will know how much water and energy he or she is using. By visualizing the resources being consumed, the user will change his or her behavior in order to reduce his or her environmental impact. This simple investment will thus pay for itself over time and increase awareness of users’ impact on the environment.
Padhne.De
While many developing countries have come a long way in increasing literacy rates, certain populations, like children in rural India, are still struggling with low literacy rates. By leveraging the power of local experiences and knowledge, Padhne.De aims to increase literacy rates through a peer-based mobile platform. Padhne.De takes an existing interactive voice response model for community communication and allows older students to record short readings and micro-lesson plans. This learning system enhances children’s reading capabilities by complementing children’s existing modes of instruction, like teachers, tutors, and textbooks. Not only will households benefit by having a program flexible with their time schedule, but they will also appreciate receiving lessons more relevant to their native tongue. Building on team-members’ existing research projects in rural India, Padhne.De seeks to implement a pilot project over the course of the Indian academic year.
(Note: This project originally won in the Big Ideas “Mobiles for Reading” category)
Transcense – Seamless Deaf/Hearing Conversations
Transcense makes group conversations possible for 360 million people with hearing loss. With Transcense they can freely communicate with their hearing peers again. Current solutions are unreliable, unaffordable and not adaptable to situations where multiple people are talking in professional or personal gatherings. By connecting smartphones in a room through a mobile app, and using cloud-based speech recognition and speaker identification technologies, Transcense is able to show to the hard-of-hearing person in less than a second, who says what.
Piezoelectric Shoe Sole GPS Tracker
In an effort to fight child trafficking in developing countries, Piezoelectric Shoe Sole GSP Tracker endeavors to manufacture a low-cost and ergonomic children’s shoe with an embedded GPS data logger powered by piezoelectric materials. The technology will provide a powerful, more reliable, energy efficient tracking solution to the growing child abduction epidemic. The team will engineer materials that can be manufactured with little to no impact on the environment, generate a nominal amount of chemical waste, produce significant electrical current and be robust enough to withstand the stress and strains of everyday use. The project will also utilize a One-for-One revenue model made popular by the retail company TOMS; it will deliver a pair of our shoe soles to a child in need for every sale made.
Smart Diaphragm
Vaginal infections in pregnant women pose two major health risks for the unborn child: preterm birth and vertical transmission of infection. Currently, there are limited options that accurately monitor vaginal conditions. The Smart Diaphragm team, collaborating with clinicians and scientists at UCSF, plans to incorporate pH and temperature sensors to ascertain vaginal health and incorporates wireless technology for real-time physician monitoring. The team will develop a prototype that it will test utilizing a bench top lab model of the intra-vaginal environment within over the next year. Its long-term goal is to transition the device to a wireless system so patients can eventually connect to physicians without visiting the clinic.
Emmunify: A Simple Tool to Save Lives with Vaccination
Globally, millions of children die from vaccine preventable diseases because they are not fully immunized. In North India, fewer than 50% of children are fully immunized; Emmunify uses communications technology to help vaccinate more infants so they can live longer and healthier, perform better in school, and escape poverty. Emmunify effectively and efficiently tracks the status of each child, reminds clients of where and when vaccines are available, facilitates logistics and supply by aggregating utilization and supply data, and eliminates paper records. It is an innovative low cost, focused portable electronic medical record (EMR) that digitizes and replaces the frequently lost or mutilated paper immunization record. It holds multiple copies of each patient’s vaccination record to ensure the data is not lost – in the cloud-based database and stored on an RFID sticker placed on the family’s mobile phone, an item that is always carried with the patient.