DtM CEO wins 2009 World Technology Award

DtM CEO Timothy Prestero was named the winner of the 2009 World Technology Award for Social Entrepreneurship in a ceremony at the Time & Life Building in Manhattan this evening. Awardees are selected by their peers as those doing the innovative work of "the greatest likely long-term significance." The list of awardees and nominees is long and distinguished, and we're honored by the recognition.

DtM CPAP wins prize at London exhibit

This week the MIT-RISD team hit the road for the Business Design Centre in London, where they presented their infant CPAP prototype at the "Made in Brunel" show. Intended as a showcase for creative thinking and a platform for graduating students to exhibit their ideas, the program included students from Brunel University, Tsinghua University in China, the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, Simon Fraser University in Canada.

At the show, the MIT-RISD team was announced as the winner of the HSBC RISD International Award 2009 for "demonstrating innovative thinking, potential for success and making a positive international impact." Great work team!

MIT-RISD Team Completes First CPAP Prototype

DtM has completed our first "build to learn" effort around neonatal respiratory therapy. The goal of the project was to explore opportunities for user-focused design and engineering to make CPAPs (continuous positive airway pressure) more affordable and easier to use in the context of global health.

We recruited our pioneers for this project through Profs. Steve Eppinger and Matt Kressy's joint MIT-RISD course "Product Design and Development." The team consisted of MIT students Jeff Heyman and Julie Chun (Leaders for Manufacturing program), Samarth Chugh and Diego Palano (Masters in Manufacturing in Mechanical Engineering), Benjamin Pope (Masters in Mechanical Engineering at MIT), and RISD students Gloria Kim and Winston Mi (Industrial Design).

The team delivered a beautiful prototype and some promising early results. From this point, DtM will work with domain experts in neonatal care and global health, and manufacturers of medical devices targeting emerging markets, to validate our design assumptions and develop the partnerships necessary to continue the project.

In the meantime, take a look at the MIT-RISD team's final presentation. [2MB PDF]

Design Philosophy for Global Health

Thanks to the media wizards at CIMIT (Mike Young in particular), we can share the following video from DtM CEO Timothy Prestero's presentation at last week's Forum. In this talk, Prestero gives an overview of our user-centered research approach, and some of the lessons learned during the development of our infant incubator.

CPAP Project Final Presentation and Design Review

On Monday May 11 from 6-8PM, DtM will host the MIT-RISD student design team for a final project presentation and a design review of their prototype infant CPAP. The student team will presents the results of their user and market research, an overview of their product requirements, and a summary of their business plan. The presentation will also feature a demonstration of their physical product prototype.

We will reserve plenty of time for audience Q&A and design feedback. The event will include a reception where we will serve light snacks and drinks.

EVENT DATE: Monday May 11, 6-8PM
LOCATION: Design that Matters, One Broadway, Cambridge MA
Access to the building after-hours is limited. To receive directions and parking instructions, RSVP no later than Thursday May 07.

DtM Research Presentation at CIMIT Forum

On Tuesday May 05 from 4-6PM, Design that Matters and the CIMIT Global Health Initiative will present "Medical Devices in Global Health: Idea to Implementation, Successes and Challenges" at the CIMIT Forum.

AGENDA: The implementation of appropriate medical devices in poor countries has the potential to alter the health care system and reach those who are most in need. With the regulatory institutions in these countries often non-existent or immature, implementation of these devices pose a myriad of challenges and obstacles. An exploration of these road blocks is needed to ensure that once these medical devices are developed, they can be successfully deployed.

Dr. Steve Ringer from Brigham and Women's Hospital, who has extensive experience in health care delivery and medical devices in Vietnam, will moderate the forum. Dr. Kris Olson and Aya Caldwell from the CIMIT Global Health Initiative will discuss their findings with a tube and mask device in Indonesia. Timothy Prestero, CEO of Design that Matters, will present findings from market research in Indonesia, Cambodia, Bangladesh and India. Students from MIT's Leaders for Manufacturing program and from the Harvard School of Public Health will present the results of their research into regulatory processes and distribution channels for medical devices in emerging markets.

The presentations will be followed by audience Q&A and networking.

EVENT DATE: Tuesday May 05, 4-6PM
LOCATION: CIMIT Forum, Richard B. Simches Research Center, Room 3110
185 Cambridge Street, Boston, MA
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Incubator Poster at World Health Care Congress

CIMIT GHI representative Aya Caldwell presented our poster, "Car Part Incubator," at the World Health Care Conference in Washington DC. Our poster will be part of the "Extremely Affordable Health Innovations" Poster Session, sponsored by the Grameen Health initiative. This was an excellent opportunity to share our work with a diverse group of medical device designers and global health experts. Aya presented another CIMIT GHI project with the poster "Cost Affective Asphyxia Intervention in Aceh," which won the poster section for Maternal-Child Health.

Also presenting at the poster session was the Embrace Global team, alumni of the 2007 DtM incubator project at Stanford University.

You can see a PDF of the incubator poster here, or you can follow it to Europe and the World Health Care Congress Europe 2009 on May 13-14 in Brussels, Belgium.

DtM Incubator in ASEE Prism Magazine

"Each year, 4 million newborns die worldwide, 98 percent of them in developing countries. Many could be saved if they were placed in incubators to keep them warm and monitored.Thousands of incubators have been donated to these regions from richer nations, but a 2007 Duke University study found that 96 percent of them break down within five years and are too costly and complex to repair. So a Boston group has devised an ingenious fix: an incubator made from old car parts." -- Thomas K. Grose, "Junk for Joy", ASEE Prism Briefinds, Mar 2009

Note that the incubator project isn't about building medical devices out of "junk." DtM and CIMIT GHI have used field research, clinical feedback and maintenance considerations to build early “works-like” and “looks-like” prototypes for a low-cost incubator using locally available materials—-specifically parts from a four-wheel drive SUV. With respect to car parts, our goal in the project has been to explore three specific opportunities:

1. Automobiles are one of the few technologies that are reliably repaired in rural communities. Is it possible to design an incubator such that, if you know how to fix a car, you can figure out how to fix this incubator?

2. There are over 40,000 parts in a standard SUV, and the auto industry has the distribution channels necessary to deliver those parts to the most remote communities. Is it possible to make use of some of those auto parts in the incubator design, in order to take advantage of economies of scale and access to spares?

3. To paraphrase Paul Hudnut at Colorado State University, Coke, cigarettes and car parts are three products you can find pretty much anywhere in the world. Given that the auto industry can deliver parts to the most remote communities, is it possible for the incubator to take advantage of their supply chain to deliver incubator parts?

Stay tuned for details from our on-going research into medical device distribution channels in emerging markets.

DtM Incubator Featured at SolidWorks World 2009

At the SolidWorks World 2009 Convention company CEO and keynote speaker Jeff Ray used the Low-Cost Infant Incubator development by Design that Matters and CIMIT as an example of innovation and great designs during hard times. Later in the discussion, Virgin CEO Richard Branson said: "Working on a new kind of [baby] incubator is more important than getting drunk every night." Amen!

See Jeff's Keynote and the Incubator video here (innovation in hard times starts at 16 minutes):

MIT and Harvard Teams Launch Incubator Research Projects

With help from students in the MIT Leaders for Manufacturing Program and the Harvard School of Public Health, DtM and partner CIMIT Global Health Initiative have launched a new research effort around distribution channels for medical devices in developing countries--with a particular focus on opportunities for our infant incubator. Our questions relate to product manufacturing, financing and distribution. There are at least two channels through which incubators and other pieces of medical equipment arrive in clinics in poor countries: through donations, and through commercial purchase. Our goal is to develop a picture of the decision-makers and stakeholders along each channel, building a better picture of those involved in medical device production for emerging markets.

The project will involve research and interviews with key stakeholders, as well as a literature survey and product benchmarking. The end reports will significantly advance our understanding of the nature of the medical device market in poor countries, and opportunities that exist for our product design service.

For the first team, we recruited students from MIT's Leaders for Manufacturing program, specifically Prof. Jan Klein's "Tiger Team" semester project program. This program, launched in 2001, was initially conceived as a way to assist small- to medium-sized manufacturers within the Greater Boston area to quickly "fix" an ongoing problem that occurred in the factory. It has since expanded to tackle a range of manufacturing issues. LfM students have made significant contributions to DtM projects in 2004, 2005 and 2007. This year's team, Oladapo "Dapo" Bakare, Kacy Gerst and Tatiana Yglesias are LfM Masters degree candidates, and all have significant industry experience to apply to the project.

For the second team, we recruited students from Harvard School of Public Health "Blueprint for Health" program, run by students in the, Harvard Social Entrepreneurs in Health (SEIH) Student Organization. "Blueprint for Health" aims to empower students to develop their social entrepreneurial skills by providing opportunities for them to join a team of students to get involved in one of many projects that we have already secured with existing public health enterprises. This is DtM's first year working with the student group. We're looking forward to their results!