[Health] FYI Medical Device Project Idea

Samuel Klein sj at laptop.org
Tue Nov 25 19:44:18 EST 2008


Hello Antonio!  I am passing this on to our health list which includes
people quite interested in these sorts of ideas, conventional and
unconventional alike.  Things are busy here as we work on new ideas
for expanding g1g1 internationally; I will be briefly in brussels this
weekend to meet with some of our european chapters.  I look forward to
hearing more from you soon as well...

--SJ


On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 4:09 PM, Antonio Battro <abattro at ross.org> wrote:
> Dear SJ!
> I hope you are doing well, I just arrived home from a long and
> successful OLPC trip to Nanjing, The Vatican, Milano,
> Asuncion-Paraguay and yesterday Santa Fe, Argentina
> Plenty of good news! Paraguay is moving and Argentina (the province of
> Santa fe) is ready to move...as well as China!
>
> I am writing now only to request your advice concerning this offering
> of XO in medicine. Do you know the person? or the project, or the
> prize?
>
> I am looking forward to hear from you
> un abrazo grande and thanks a lot!
> Antonio
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Cecilia Alcala <ceciliaalcala at gmail.com>
> Date: Nov 24, 2008 6:49 PM
> Subject: FYI Medical Device Project Idea
> To: antonio at laptop.org
>
>
> Antonio,
>
> Creo que vos serías un buen tutor para este proyecto :)
>
> Abrazos,
>
> Cecilia
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Silas Bernardoni <silasbernardoni at gmail.com>
>  Date: Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 4:39 AM
> Subject: Medical Device Project Idea
> To: Cecilia Alcala <ceciliaalcala at gmail.com>
> Cc: rau.gutierrez at gmail.com
>
>
> Cecilia,
>
> Do you remember when I talked to you about my idea of developing
> affordable medical devices for use with the XO?  Today, one of my
> friends told me about a super prestigious design competition with a
> $150,000 prize.  I was thinking of using the XO medical devices as our
> project for this contest. I plan on running the project out of our
> student org (UW OLPC) for the spring semester but the long-term idea
> is to form a company around the idea and eventually manufacture the
> devices on a large scale.  Here is where you come in...  Do you think
> we could do testing of these devices in Paraguay over the summer?  We
> would use our set-up money and student org money to develop the
> devices and provide them to hospitals down in Paraguay and bring
> engineers down there to work with the doctors to do testing and put
> the final touches on the designs next summer.  This would allow me to
> bring down some super qualified engineers (additional) to work on this
> project but also have then help out with all of the technical projects
> that you've got going on.  (My plan is to use the same guys to make
> the water sensors.)
>
> Paraguay is a critical part of the plan because we want to do
> real-world field testing of the devices before we even think of
> putting them into large scale production.  (I refuse to sell people
> crap that is going to break.)  All of the development would be
> not-for-profit and done by students here on campus but in order to do
> large scale manufacturing we would have to form some sort of company
> to handle the sales, assembly, distribution, ect.  (By large scale I
> mean provide these devices to all XO deployments world wide.  So
> 100,000s of devices.)
>
> The medical devices we would be developing are mostly monitoring
> devices so there is little patient liability involved.  The two we
> have talked specifically about is an EKG machine for monitoring heart
> rate and blood pressure, and a blood-oxygen sensor.  (Each could be
> made for around $5-$30. We need to do more research before setting our
> goal prices.)  All of these devices could then use the XOs wireless
> capabilities to transmit the patients medical information to a central
> location.  All of the information could then be put on one computer
> screen which would allow a single nurse to monitor an entire wing of
> patients in real time.  We have already gotten the Biomedical
> Engineering department to give us a lab in our building dedicated to
> the project and are working on writing up an official proposal to
> submit to companies in industry for sponsorship and donated supplies.
>
> I've attached my rough draft of the initial project description.
> Could you take a look at it and give me a gut reaction as to whether
> you think we would be able to do testing in Paraguay.  I would really
> appreciate it.  The project is going to go forward in any case but I
> would like to put you guys in the proposals to get you a little more
> international press.  I know you are busy so don't spend more than 10
> min on this now but I would appreciate hearing your initial reaction.
> I hope things are going well for you.  Let me know if you have any
> other ideas for projects.  As you can see, we have a lot of highly
> capable students here on campus that are looking for technical
> projects.
>
> Silas
>
> PS If you are super busy you can put this off for a few days.  No worries!
>


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