South African and international researchers are stripping the luxuries and costs from First World products to build independently powered technology that could save millions of lives around the globe.
A wind-up foetal heart rate monitor is heading towards an initial production run as the culmination of six years of work by a former professor of neonatology at the University of Cape Town, Dave Woods, and other doctors from South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Woods has developed a machine to detect distressed infants during labour so that healthcare workers can intervene before the baby dies or is brain-damaged. His machines are powered differently because they are often needed in places without reliable electricity.
Held on the mother’s belly, it uses ultrasound to produce a digital read-out of the baby’s heart rate to enable healthcare workers detect signs of distress.
Through Powerfree Education and Technology (PET), an NGO, Woods and his colleagues have worked with Freeplay Energy, one of the pioneers of wind-up technology, to develop and test the machines. Funding to start an initial run of 200 mass-produced machines is being sought, and PET intends placing these in international centres for further testing and marketing.
Woods says: ”We want to be the Volks-agen Beetle of medical technology. We need technology appropriate to the needs of the developing world. First World technology is not engineered for the needs of the developing world.”
PET’s mission is to change this by developing foolproof, rugged and alternatively powered technology, and providing the training to operate it through distance learning courses.
Another design heading towards production is a wind-up pulse oximeter, which measures oxygen content in the blood by using light passing through fingers, ears, or even children’s feet.
In the early stages of research and development, is an alternatively powered syringe driver — a device that sends a steady and measured dose of drugs into the blood stream. One of its uses is to give morphine to terminally ill patients who may be unable to take the drug orally, and a suitable syringe driver could help people in developing countries die without pain — a particularly urgent need given the rising death toll as a result of Aids.
John Hutchinson, chief technical officer for Freeplay Energy, says the company is not only looking to develop a machine that is independently powered, but also one that fits all-size syringes to make it suitable for mass production and use in developing countries.
Meanwhile, Stellenbosch University is incubating a revolution in TB diagnosis, which is key to reversing the rising levels of the killer disease. Sputum specimens in South Africa, as in many other countries, are sent to a central laboratory for testing. But the convoluted and time-consuming process gives room for error at each step of the chain, from patient to laboratory and back to the clinic — and then the patient may not return.
Rob Warren, Ben Marais and their team at the DST/NRF Centre of Excellence in Biomedical Tuberculosis Research, may have found a solution by making two groundbreaking adaptations to the normal laboratory microscope. The fragile, expensive and power-hungry mercury vapour ultraviolet lamp has been replaced with energy-efficient, durable and long-lasting light-emitting diodes. The low energy consumption allowed engineer Frank Peiser to go one step further — by cannibalising a Freeplay wind-up torch, he was able to make the microscope human-powered. One minute of hand-cranking can provide enough power to diagnose one specimen, potentially bringing a new meaning to the term ”patient involvement”.
The Stellenbosch team now has a diagnostic microscope that can be powered by mains electricity, batteries, solar or human power. It is looking for funding for the next step of discarding the expensive and fragile laboratory microscope for a cheaper and more durable model, and then building enough machines to do proper field trials. Warren says by altering the wavelength of light and chemicals used, the same technology could be adapted to detect many other pathogens.
”You’d need to deactivate the sample with sunlight or Jik, but in theory you could whip the machine out of the back of a 4×4 in a remote area and set it up.” Marais has demonstrated that the LED model has proved its worth against traditional equipment.