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Know Thy Hospital: Engineers and entrepreneurs are rethinking medical device design, and the world could be healthier as a result
Well-meaning individuals and organizations from high-income countries often donate medical equipment – mostly used – to hospitals in low-resource settings. But it often fails because it isn’t designed for the "predictable unpredictability" of these settings. Mike Miesen argues that we need innovative devices designed for the needs of the customer, not the donor.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Human-Centered Design – Common Aspirations, Uncommon Action: Second iteration of the Acumen/IDEO.org course is after social change doers
Acumen and IDEO.org are partnering for a second time to offer Human-Centered Design for Social Innovation. The seven-week course is based on the fundamental belief that gaining a deep understanding of the needs, hopes, and aspirations of potential customers and the lives they live yields incredible inspiration for new solutions. Human-centered designers learn by doing and evolve their solutions based on real-time feedback.
- Categories
- Education
- Tags
- product design
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Beyond Opinion: Understanding Consumer Demand in Developing Countries: A March 7 USAID forum will showcase new techniques
Why do pro-poor technologies fail to achieve scale — even when they offer proven benefits?
Part of the problem is that we aren’t getting reliable information about what poor people actually want. And as a result, we make lots of assumptions. On March 7, USAID’s Office of Science and Technology will be showcasing some very innovative techniques for measuring consumer demand in low-income communities.- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- product design
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Quick Wins in Mobile Money: How simple usability tweaks can significantly increase mobile money usage
Mobile finance has great potential to serve the poor, but many existing services are not designed around their needs, behaviors and capabilities. New research from Grameen Foundation reveals simple usability fixes that mobile money providers could incorporate to help their products better meet the needs of the BoP, and reach scale and commercial viability.
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- Uncategorized
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How to Keep Clean-Burning Cookstoves From Gathering Dust: Devices that cut down on respiratory diseases too often aren’t being used
Smoky indoor cook fires and traditional stoves lead to 2 million deaths per year. In response, various programs have distributed cookstoves to 830 million people over the past 50 years. Unfortunately, many of these clean-burning cookstoves are unused. New monitoring technologies are being designed to find out why.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Technology
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New Dimensions in Health Care: 3D printers offer economy, new products and jobs
3D printers remain confined to technical universities and specialized labs in developing countries, but enthusiasts believe their time in the spotlight, particularly in the developed world, has come.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Health-care innovations to drive down local costs
A diagnostic kit that can detect tuberculosis (TB) in 25 minutes, diagnosis of diabetes using a dipstick and a doctor consultation that can be capped at R50. These are just a few of the health-care innovations that South African medical researchers and companies have up their sleeves, and are planning to introduce to the health-care system in their bid to drive down costs.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Hacking global health: Technology is transforming global health care
For many people in the developed world, healthcare is defined by the ubiquitous scent of disinfectant, the beeping of the cardiac monitors, and other properly sterile equipment. However, in many low- and middle-income countries, such an image is incomplete or nonexistent.
- Categories
- Health Care