We made it to $10,000! Thank you so much to our 66 supporters. We still have 24 days left, and we have set a stretch goal of reaching 100 contributors!
Your show of support means more attention and resources to solve this serious problem and bring us closer to a world of happy moms. Please help us by sharing on Facebook and Twitter, blogging, and spreading the word! Thank you!
We could never have succeeded without our corporate sponsors who supported us from the very beginning of the campaign. Sponsorship gave us the early momentum that led to our ultimate success. We have worked closely with all of our sponsors and recommend their services highly! Please take a minute to check out the great work of Premier Platinum Sponsors Dassault Systèmes and SOLIDWORKS, Gold Sponsors Optikos Corporation and Boston Design Solutions, and Silver Sponsor Supporting Strategies.
ABOUT OPTIKOS
The Optikos Corporation optical engineering team, along with CEO Stephen D. Fantone, has donated key technical insight and strategy from our early days designing the DtM Kinkajou Microfilm Projector to our most recent launch, Firefly Phototherapy. We look forward to solving the toughest technical problems with Optikos during Project Pelican. Funding provided by Optikos will diagnose 1,000 babies. Thank you so much, Optikos!
ABOUT BOSTON DESIGN SOLUTIONS
Boston Design Solutions provides outstanding hardware and software engineering design services on-time and on-budget. BDS specified, designed, built, tested, and successfully delivered the electronics for Design that Matters’ three Firefly clinical evaluation prototypes. To-date, the devices have been used in Vietnam for over 850 days collectively, treating over 150 jaundiced newborns and defying the term “prototype”. Funding provided by BDS will diagnose 1,250 babies as part of DtM’s Pelican project. Thank you so much Boston Design Solutions!
ABOUT SUPPORTING STRATEGIES
Supporting Strategies makes our bookkeeping easy so Design that Matters can focus on saving lives. One morning, we arrived at the DtM office to find that the box with all our paper tax documents was missing! We’d left them too close to the trash can, and they were mistaken for trash! We thanked our lucky stars for our partnership with Supporting Strategies, who ensures that copies of all our paper records also live in the digital world. Funding provided by Supporting Strategies will diagnose 500 babies. Thank you so much Supporting Strategies!
We would like to take this opportunity to showcase the fantastic work our MIT + RISD student team been doing to ramp up Project Pelican, especially after seeing their great design review this past week. Some of the highlights include:
We are just weeks away from the student team’s final presentation and we can't wait to see what they produce!
- Will Harris, IDSA
DtM Designer
In honor of Mother’s Day and mothers around the world, Design that Matters invites you to support our crowdfundingcampaign, hosted on Indiegogo's freshly redesigned platform.
We are raising $10,000 to launch the Pelican Pocket Pulse Oximeter Project to create a durable, affordable tool for diagnosing babies with pneumonia.
We’re also raising awareness of pneumonia, a condition that we in the U.S. hardly ever worry about, and the #1 cause of death in children under five.
We need as many people as possible to join our campaign to build the momentum we need to fight newborn pneumonia. Take action:
Even if you can't contribute financially, please help us spread the word about Project Pelican and pneumonia awareness!
Our new, superstar “DataWings for Firefly” hackathon team will continue their work as part of a Harvard’s Creative Explorations in Screen-Based and Physical Computing with instructors Bakhtiar Mikhak and Alec Resnick. The result will be a more feature-rich demonstration of what we could do with sms data from Firefly devices in the field. Our Interaction Intern, David Solomon, will work with data superstar Galia Traub, to create this next iteration. The prototype will demonstrate how the Internet of Things can be applied beyond smart refrigerators and office chairs, to improve outcomes in global health!
This week DtM Designer, Will Harris, traveled to Providence to create some quick “sacrificial prototypes” with RISD Industrial Designers Leah Chung and Kevin Wiesner. Sacrificial prototypes are the earliest of early stage prototypes that are used in product design to illuminate what you don’t know about the problem, and more quickly reach a realistic concept. Some of our internal Pelican “sacrificial prototypes” helped us better understand that we did not fully understand the problem of medical devices accidentally “walking away” from hospitals.
During the work session the team made some big strides, which included:
It was an incredibly productive day that lead to some of the first student team physical concepts, allowing them to start doing user interviews at Hospitals around Boston.
- Will Harris, IDSA
DtM Designer
The DtM team served as a mentor and partner for Healthcare's Grant H@ckfest. This 48-hour hackathon was hosted by MIT H@cking Medicine, the Kauffman Foundation, and CAMTech. Elizabeth gave a keynote to the more than 350 students, young entrepreneurs, engineers, and medical professionals, using the story of Firefly to illustrate the importance of developing a focused project statement.
During the pitch sessions, DtM presented a new project idea -- a system for connecting medical devices such as Firefly to donors, hospitals, NGOs, and service technicians via sms text message. Our hackathon team, “DataWings for Firefly,” created a working data visualization prototype that won an athenahealth award. The DataWings team was so inspired by the experience that they will continue to work on the project in hopes of creating a proof of concept that we can present during 2014.
Elizabeth's talk at Healthcare's Grand H@ckfest is part of our series sharing lessons learned from the design and launch of Firefly phototherapy. This series is made possible with support from The Lemelson Foundation in celebration of 20 years of improving lives through invention.
Our Board of Advisors is expanding fast! This month we are honored to announce that Leith Greenslade has joined our Board of Advisors, bumping our network of industry experts to a whole new level!
Leith is Vice Chair, Office of the UN Special Envoy for Financing the Health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Co-Chair of Child Health at the MDG Health Alliance, which work in support of the UN Secretary-General’s Every Woman, Every Child movement to accelerate achievement of the MDGs and advance the health of women and children globally. Serving in several positions with the Australian Government, including as Policy Advisor and Speechwriter to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Health, as Economic Adviser to the Leader of the Opposition and as Chief of Staff to the Shadow Minister for Social Security and the Status of Women, Leith holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, a Masters in Business Administration from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a First Class Honors Degree from the University of Queensland. Leith lives in New York City with her three daughters and is a passionate advocate for the empowerment of women and children.
We are excited to announce that Firefly has treated over 1,000 newborns in Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia! While 1,000 newborns treated is an amazing milestone, we are even more excited that the 72 devices currently distributed will treat over 35,000 newborns during their lifetime.
Firefly’s unique double sided design allows it to reduce treatment times by almost 50%, but more importantly, allows for effective treatment of severe jaundice allowing infants around the world to avoid dangerous exchange transfusions, which require all of the blood in the newborn to be replaced. We have already seen Firefly’s impact as it has entered areas rife with severe jaundice, like Myanmar. We can't wait to tell the story of the next 1,000 or 10,000 babies treated as we plow ahead in helping to address jaundice worldwide.
Design that Matters would like to express our sincere thanks to our Firefly project partners the East Meets West Foundation and Vietnamese manufacturer Medical Technology Transfer and Services. Their partnership made Firefly possible.
Additional thanks to Firefly’s lead donors: The Lemelson Foundation, The van Otterloo Family, Bohemian Foundation, an anonymous donor, ANT Italy - Friends of Trento Neonatology, The Autonomous Province of Trento, Italy, and Martin and Debbie Hale.
Whoa! Big news, Firefly is featured in the World Health Organization 2013 Compendium of innovation health technologies for low-resource settings. The WHO describes “The objective of the compendium series of innovative medical devices, assistive devices and eHealth solutions is to provide a neutral platform for technologies which are likely to be suitable for use in less resourced settings.”
We are elated that Firefly was chosen by the WHO’s panel of industry and global health experts. Inclusion in the compendium, assembled by the leading institution on world health, will spread the news of Firefly throughout the world, and create a greater demand for this unique, lifesaving device!
Design that Matters would like to express our sincere thanks to our Firefly project partners the East Meets West Foundation and Vietnamese manufacturer Medical Technology Transfer and Services. Their partnership made Firefly possible.
Additional thanks to Firefly’s lead donors: The Lemelson Foundation, The van Otterloo Family, Bohemian Foundation, an anonymous donor, ANT Italy - Friends of Trento Neonatology, The Autonomous Province of Trento, Italy, and Martin and Debbie Hale.
We are happy to announce that DtM donor and friend, Suzanne Graves, has joined our board of advisors! Suzanne is the first New York based member of our Board of Advisors, stretching our advisor network from Alaska to New York city!
Suzanne manages the Machina Trading LTD family office funds, which invests in hedge funds and private equity – with a focus on angel and growth capital investing. Suzanne has fifteen years of experience in management roles with finance and technology companies both in NYC and Seattle. Suzanne is an investor and close advisor to Artivest Inc., a NYC-based financial tech company delivering curated electronic access to private funds. She serves on the Board of HalsaMD, which focuses on building facilities specializing in bariatric medicine.
Previously, Suzanne served as COO of Area 51 LLC, a market neutral hedge fund. Suzanne held management positions at CourtLink (now subsidiary of Lexis Nexis) as well as Destinations/Teren Corp. (acquired by Galileo International). She received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Washington. Suzanne lives in New York City with her husband and twin sons. Suzanne is originally from Vietnam and immigrated to the United States in 1975.
We have launched our first Project Pelican student team to tackle newborn pneumonia! The DtM Pelican project pitch attracted a nine-member multidisciplinary team from the MIT & Rhode Island School of Design Product Design and Development course.
The team, composed of industrial designers from RISD, MBA candidates from MIT Sloan, and engineers from MIT will spend the semester crafting everything from the Pelican business plan to looks-like and works-like prototypes. We are excited to welcome Leah Chung, Phillip Daniel, Keiichi Onishi, Esther Mangan, Aditya Ranjan, Shubhang Tandon, Kevin Wiesner, Wei Wu, and Victoria Young to the ever growing list of DtM collaborators. We can't wait to see what they create this semester!
- Will Harris, IDSA
DtM Designer
Say hello to Project Pelican, DtM’s new program to design a pulse oximeter to diagnose newborns with pneumonia. Keeping with the animal themed project names from our most successful projects, Kinkajou and Firefly, the name Pelican was chosen due to the way a pulse oximeter hugs a newborn’s foot reminding us of a Pelican beak.
ABOUT PELICAN
A 2013 Unicef report revealed pneumonia is the leading cause of child deaths worldwide. In 2012, over 1.1 million children, including 330,000 newborns, died of pneumonia. To put this in perspective, 132,000 children died from AIDS, and 462,000 children died from Malaria. Though 1 in 4 childhood pneumonia deaths are newborns, technology targeting newborns remains overlooked. A pulse oximeter is the best way to identify newborns in need of oxygen, and diagnose pneumonia. We are currently designing a spot check pulse oximeter to solve this overlooked problem, and reach 1 million newborns.
NeoNurture was shipped to Science Gallery in Dublin to be exhibited at Fail Better. Much like Tim’s TEDxBoston talk, Fail Better highlights the importance of failure in design and innovation and features some of the “world’s greatest failures” by famous explorers, inventors, scientists, and athletes. The exhibit includes work from design and engineering greats like James Dyson and Eben Upton, the creator of Raspberry Pi! This is NeoNurture’s first time on exhibit in Europe and will hopefully inspire a whole new generation of great minds to create context-appropriate technology for the developing world.
At a check-in meeting mid-month at the MGH Center for Global Health, Dr. Kris Olson mentioned that the lead engineer for CAMTech’s Augmented Infant Resuscitator (AIR) project was headed to Uganda to test their engineering prototype. CAMTech had worked with an industrial designer to create a set of renderings - photo images depicting the final product appearance. During DtM’s experiences in the field, we found that physical models always generate richer feedback than photos, so we offered to help.
Less than 48 hours after our meeting, Tim presented physical models built on DtM’s 3D printer converting three of their design sketches into reality. Thanks to some speedy design work from Will, who had to come in after hours because of jury duty, the prototypes were precise enough to screw into existing threads on existing Laerdal masks, illustrating how AIR will add functionality to existing resuscitators. The next week, CAMTech team member Kevin Cedrone was in Uganda, testing the concepts with target users. Tim says, Buck Rodgers!
On January 23, David Solomon joined Design that Matters as our new Interaction Intern, a half-year full-time position. In his third year in Northeastern’s undergraduate Computer Engineering program, David brings eight years of rapid prototyping experience from his role as a student leader at the South End Technology Center in Boston.
David is currently in his third year at Northeastern University pursuing a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering. He comes to DtM with experience in electronics, coding, digital design, circuit design, and fabrication from his work in the Fab Lab at South End Technology Center and his studies. His experience spans operating laser cutters, vinyl cutters, and 3D printers to using programs such as LibreOffice Draw, Inkscape, Arduino, and Eagle to design multiple projects. David has helped instruct young people in the use of Fab Lab machines, so that they can take a spontaneous idea and transform it into something tangible right before their eyes.
In recent news, East Meets West Foundation (EMW) delivered 40 Firefly devices to 22 hospitals across Myanmar! This is extremely exciting as the country was only recently opened up for international aid agencies in 2011, ending the isolation that has prevented outside intervention, most recently leading the UN to note the unprecedented lack of international access available after Cyclone Nargis killed over 130,000 people in 2008.
In East Meets West partner hospitals in Myanmar, health care staff are giving 1000 exchange blood transfusions a year. EBT is the jaundice treatment of last resort, requiring total replacement of a newborn’s blood supply. If the rates at EMW partners hospitals are similar at other hospitals in Myanmar, this would mean 5000 EBTs a year countrywide. Luciano Moccia, International Coordinator of Breath of Life for EMW commented, “severe jaundice is by far the biggest problem in Myanmar.”
This is an astronomical number when compared to the number of such procedures done in first world settings. Dr. Steven Ringer, Chief of Newborn Medicine at Brigham and Women’s, mentioned he had seen only one blood exchange transfusion for newborn jaundice performed in the U.S. during his 30+ year career. We hope Firefly’s introduction into Myanmar eliminates the severe jaundice that plagues the country.
- Will Harris, IDSA
DtM Designer
Design that Matters would like to express our sincere thanks to our Firefly project partners the East Meets West Foundation and Vietnamese manufacturer Medical Technology Transfer and Services. Their partnership made Firefly possible.
Additional thanks to Firefly’s lead donors: The Lemelson Foundation, The van Otterloo Family, Bohemian Foundation, an anonymous donor, ANT Italy - Friends of Trento Neonatology, The Autonomous Province of Trento, Italy, and Martin and Debbie Hale.
During Summer/Fall 2014, we look forward to presenting a series of essays sharing the lessons learned designing and launching Firefly Newborn Phototherapy. This blog series is made possible with support from The Lemelson Foundation in celebration of their 20-year history of improving lives through invention.
With visionary support from The Lemelson Foundation 2011-2013, Design that Matters formed a partnership with East Meets West Foundation and Vietnamese manufacturer Medical Technology Transfer and Services to design, test, manufacture, and deliver innovations to serve the needs of poor communities around the world. Our first product is Firefly Newborn Phototherapy, a world-class technology to treat newborns with jaundice.
Firefly has won many awards including the Edison Award Gold, the top Spark! design award, IDSA IDEA Silver, and was featured in the October 2013 Fast Company Innovation by Design Award issue. Firefly is listed in the 2013 World Health Organization Compendium of Medical Devices highlighting the most innovative health technologies for low resource settings.
As of June 1 2014, Firefly devices have treated over 3,000 newborns in Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, East Timor, Thailand, Malaysia, and Ghana. Together, we expect to distribute at least 1,000 Firefly devices, reaching over 500,000 newborns.
Design that Matters would like to express our sincere thanks to our Firefly project partners the East Meets West Foundation and Vietnamese manufacturer Medical Technology Transfer and Services. Their partnership made Firefly possible.
Additional thanks to Firefly’s lead donors: The Lemelson Foundation, The van Otterloo Family, Bohemian Foundation, an anonymous donor, ANT Italy - Friends of Trento Neonatology, The Autonomous Province of Trento, Italy, and Martin and Debbie Hale.
