High-tech inventions meet global-health needs in cool ways
Friday, December 20, 2013
“It looks like a wet suit,” says Anurag Mairal, picking up a pile of thick blue material decorated with bands of black Velcro and bright yellow numbers, “But actually it’s an anti-shock garment.”
I’m at the Westlake Avenue lab of Seattle-based global-health nonprofit PATH. Mairal is showing off one of its recent inventions — a suit that uses NASA technology (developed for use at the space station) to address one of the leading causes of maternal deaths in the world, excessive bleeding following childbirth. Women are strapped into the suit, which applies pressure to constrict blood loss long enough for safe transport to a hospital.
It’s a clever blending of high-tech research and pragmatic application. And it’s just one of many cool, surprising and even downright weird global-health inventions coming out of Washington — the state Bloomberg ranked the “Most Innovative” in the country earlier this week.
Source: The Seattle Times (link opens in a new window)
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