design

Quite often, information about new health technologies for use in the field cross my desk and I feel as though I get a glimpse of the future—a better, healthier and more secure future at that. The most recent device, Freeplay Energy's Fetal Heartrate Monitor, couldn't have had better timing.

I spent last week in Mexico, doing site visits in rural Yucatan and Chiapas, to gain a better level of understanding of the state of access to healthcare services in these regions. I saw peri-urban, primary care hospitals with doctors who are over worked and unable to keep up with demand (with people traveling sometimes four hours by car to get there).

I also visited rural clincs. Of the 3 clinics we visited, one didn't have enough medicines for it's patients, the second was open but the doctor was not there due to sickness, and the third was closed (we found out the doctor attends that clincic once per week on Monday, Wednesday OR Friday -- we were there on a Friday).

One story that sticks in my mind is hearing from a doctor in a primary care hospital in Yucatan. They do not have the equipment to conduct ulatrasounds on pregnant women, so they must send the women to a larger hospital.

Six months ago we started the AshokaTECH blog! Ashoka's blog about technology and invention.

And this was our very first post! Ah the memories!

One of my favorite subjects under the technology branch is how the intersection of anthropological research methods, like user studies, and engineering is being used to for social good. Like the work of Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Pradip Sarmah--he observed two challenges for Rickshaw drivers in Rural India: 1) Rickshaws are typically very heavy, and 2) they are expensive.  He put 1 and 2 together and brought in a team of designers to come up with a light-weight, inexpensive version of the originals.  He even went a step further and created a lending system so that these Rickshaw drivers could own the vehicles and be self-sufficient.  Learn more about Pradip's work here. And if you are hungry for more Design and Social Change stories be sure to visit: Ideo, Design for the other 90%, Engineers without Borders.

"One of the issues faced by many Guatemalans is having access to pure and clean water. According to the Guatemala Ministry of Health, 98 percent of the country’s water sources are contaminated with water-borne diseases such as typhoid fever, hepatitis A, cholera, giardia, and amebiasis,” states the thesis of Aguapura, a water purifier developed by students from three different universities including CalTech, the Art Center College of Design, and Landivar University, which is based in Guatemala.

Engineering schools around the world are focusing more and more on bottom of the pyramid designs that will improve quality of life. And at courses like CalTech’s “Design for Development course” (taught by Professor Ken Pickar) high-design is fused with rigorous engineering and an experiential component. CalTech students from Pickar's class spend time in the field understanding the needs of Guatemalan's and bringing their insights to their design.

The Danish 2009 INDEX Award selects the best products in the world for their "design to improve life," like the fetal heart monitor which uses "human energy" to generate it's own electricity. Pretty cool.

Ashoka's Valeria Budinich, who directs Ashoka's Full Economic Citizenship Initiative, presented the award for the Home category (you can see her at minute 26 of the video of the award ceremony). The Home category award was given to Chula for their creative design of a build-it-yourself" biomass stove ideal for low-income homes (as shown in the video above).

"Over 50,000 people in Guatemala are disabled," states Daniel Oliver, Executive Director of Intelligent Mobility International.  "Of these, roughly 20,000 do not have access to any kind of wheelchair."  Intelligent Mobility International (IMI) is working to rectify this problem using an idea that is as powerful as it is simple: building wheelchairs out of bicycle parts.

Photo credit: flickr/moriza

Bicycles are an obvious alternative to owning a car and the solution to our ever-increasing pollution problem; so why aren't more people biking on a daily basis?

This year, the Taipei International Bicycle Design Competition (IBCD) attracted over 900 entries from around the world. The design solutions aim at increasing the usability of bikes (see pictures of the finalists' designs here).

Simon Páez, a Colombian citizen who won the competition's 2009 Merit Award tells us about his rationale behind TRIBO, the design concept that he submitted for this year's IBCD:

"In Bogota we have the largest infrastructure of bike lanes in South America, yet only 4% of the population ride their bikes to work every day. The city of Bogota developed bike lanes all around  the city to decrease the traffic caused by the vehicular congestion, but this has not happened because vehicle users find bicycles unfit to move around the city. After investigating, I found that people weren't comfortable enough, and that they didn't feel safe enough to ride their bikes in a city like Bogota. TRIBO meets needs like safety and comfort to encourage people to use the 350 km infrastructure of bike lanes in Bogota and thus decrease the social and envionmental impact made by vehicular congestion"

One of my favorite subjects under the technology branch is how the intersection of anthropological research methods, like user studies, and engineering is being used to for social good. Like the work of Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Pradip Sarmah--he observed two challenges for Rickshaw drivers in Rural India: 1) Rickshaws are typically very heavy, and 2) they are expensive.  He put 1 and 2 together and brought in a team of designers to come up with a light-weight, inexpensive version of the originals.  He even went a step further and created a lending system so that these Rickshaw drivers could own the vehicles and be self-sufficient.  Learn more about Pradip's work here. And if you are hungry for more Design and Social Change stories be sure to visit: Ideo, Design for the other 90%, Engineers without Borders.