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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.

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