Low Cost Health solutions for the developing world

Despite the attractions of a hot summer day in August, over 40 attentive members congregated at Tantric India Bistro to hear three wonderful organizations describe their efforts to bring Low Cost Health solutions for the developing world.

This was yet another in the monthly series of networking events being jointly sponsored by TIE Social Entrepreneurs Group, NetSAP Boston and Tantric India Bistro to help promote Boston’s Social Entrepreneurs.  The three different perspectives highlighted a range of efforts being channeled to address some of the most pressing health issues around the world by providing affordable, low cost solutions.

The first presentation was by Komera, a team of recent graduates from MIT that had been working on a project to create a low cost manufacturing process for sanitary pads using locally available product. In developing countries, where affordable alternatives for sanitary napkins are not available, over 36% of the women miss work or school resulting in over 50 days of absenteeism per year. The team felt by focusing on using banana fiber that is plentiful in their target countries in Africa, they could easily process it and create an affordable alternative. They had worked together with Sustainable Health Enterprises to help bring the product to Rwanda as a pilot. Their initial alpha prototype was assembled with US based parts and cost around $1250 but their target is to significantly lower the costs once in field testing and validation of their design is completed. The elegant design allowed two people to comfortably fill and seal the sanitary pads. It is expected the pads would cost around $0.75 per packet of 10 whereas current costs are 3 to 4 times as much. Their business model would put their designs out in public to encourage local manufacture and would also encourage local entrepreneurs to fund their operations through micro-finance.  The Komera team consisted of Amrita Saigal, Katherine Smyth, and Zachary Rose and recently won $5000 at the MIT IDEAS competition.  http://komera.webs.com/

Tim Prestero, Founder and CEO of Design That Matters challenged the audience to think through some of the issues a designer is faced with when they are confronted with a foreign environment like a crowded hospital in a developing country. Using several examples based on some of their client implementations, Tim showed how important it was to look at things from the end users perspective. Design that Matters uses a unique partnership model where they tap into volunteer engineering and design resources from Boston based companies and universities to help them design innovative solutions for their clients in the developing world. Their latest effort is developing a next-generation, low-cost phototherapy unit for treating newborn infants with jaundice in Vietnam, India, and beyond. Several of their designs have been showcased at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York and most recently they have been named a finalist for the National Design Awards to be held at the White House in October.  http://designthatmatters.org/

Professor Raskar from MIT’s Camera Culture group presented his latest innovation that was an interactive, portable, and inexpensive solution for estimating refractive errors in the human eye. . Using a simple lens attachment and a cell phone, end users can quickly determine their required eyeglass prescription.  Prof. Raskar pointed out that over 2 Billion people worldwide have some sort of refractive error and over 600 million live their lives with uncorrected errors. Traditional methods of testing like eye charts can be unreliable when deployed in rural areas or expensive when a box of trial lenses cost over $150. With a target price of less than $20 for the lens attachment, the new system is ideal for use in far flung rural areas, especially in India. The NETRA system projects a series of patterns on the camera that the viewer looks at thru the lens attachment. By changing the patterns till they match, the camera software can quickly estimate the power and astigmatic angle for the viewer.  http://eyenetra.com

The monthly Meetups have gotten great reviews. Some of the feedback thus far:

·        It was a terrific, diverse and engaged audience and I made some fantastic connections.  Great stuff!

·        The presentations were very interesting and I enjoyed meeting the other attendees, several of whom I hope to speak with again about our mutual interest in health care for the developing world.  Thank you for organizing such a great event.

·        I'm so glad you've organized this group and I'm glad I discovered it. What a wonderful way to meet like-minded people. I'm already looking forward to the next Monday evening meeting!

The purpose of these monthly events is to help create a networking hub for greater Boston where social entrepreneurs can meet and exchange ideas and connections with others who are interested in social impact. This is a regular monthly feature at Tantric India Bistro on the First Monday of the month under the joint sponsorship of Mary Sen, proprietor of the Tantric India Bistro, The TIE Boston Social Entrepreneurs Group and NETSAP Boston.

NOTE For September, the monthly meeting has been moved to Monday, September 13 due to the Labor Day holiday.  It will be from 6.30 pm onwards and the topic will be “Innovative micro-finance solutions.”  For more information, visit: http://www.meetup.com/Social-Entrepreneurs-Group-Boston/

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