Sometimes, it seems like medical expenses cost an arm and a leg (figuratively, of course). And that’s not just the case for patients, but doctors and researchers, too.
That’s all about to change though, thanks to a recent innovation involving 3D printing, syringes and the Michigan Technological University. The research team, led by Joshua Pearce, has created an online open-source syringe pump library — so now, instead of ordering equipment, doctors can download, customize and 3D print their own pump (which is used to give doses of medication or fluids to patients).
All of the designs are customizable and all a physician needs is a RepRap 3D printer, small electric stepper motor that drives liquids, simple hardware and a syringe.
“Not only have we designed a single syringe pump, we’ve designed all future syringe pumps,” Pearce tells Michigan Tech. “Scientists can customize the design of a pump for exactly what they are doing, just by changing a couple of numbers in the software.”
Not only is this more efficient for physicians, but the 3D printing will drastically cut the cost of the equipment as well. While most open-source syringes run about $250 to $2,500, a 3D printed one only costs about $50 (the cost of the materials).
According to the researchers at Michigan Tech, “the development of open-source hardware has the potential to radically reduce the cost of performing experimental science and put high-quality scientific tools in the hands of everyone from the most prestigious labs to rural clinics in the developing world.”
Michigan Tech biomedical engineer Megan Frost agrees. She’s been using the 3D pumps to inject agents into culture cells.
“What’s beautiful about what Joshua is doing is that it lets us run three or four experiments in parallel, because we can get the equipment for so much less,” she tells Michigan Tech. “We’d always wanted to run experiments concurrently, but we couldn’t because the syringe pumps cost so much. This has really opened doors for us.”
Presumably, with the advent of 3D-printed equipment, the financial savings will be passed along to patients. Meaning that going to the doctor’s will soon be a little less painful — on your wallet anyways.
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Tag: Technology
With Millions Suffering From Alzheimer’s, This Teenager’s Invention Will Improve Their Safety
Kenneth Shinozuka isn’t like other teenagers. Maybe it’s because he’s one of the contestants in the Google Science Fair, an international competition for 13- to 18-year-olds, or because he’s the winner of the Scientific American Science in Action Award.
Most likely, though, it’s because of the impressive fact that he just invented a device to ease the lives of Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers.
About 5.2 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s, and, of those, 65 percent are wanderers — meaning that they walk away from their homes and loved ones, sometimes ending up lost or disoriented. Not only is this dangerous for the person with Alzheimer’s, but it causes added stress for caregivers.
Shinozuka’s grandfather is a wanderer. Many times at night, his grandpa will just get out of bed and start walking — oftentimes resulting in accidents. Which is why Shinozuka took matters into his own hands and created a wearable detection device.
So, how does it work?
Well, the device is worn on the patient’s foot, and it detects the pressure every time the patient takes a step. This triggers the wireless audible alarm in the caregiver’s smartphone signaling them that the patient is on the move. The device comes as a sock and a sensor assembly that can be attached to the foot.
Shinozuka used his grandfather as the subject of his six-month-long test trial. The result: Of the 437 known times of wandering, the device detected 100 percent of them. Even better, there weren’t any false alarms.
Currently, Shinozuka is conducting further testing, using nursing home patients as subjects.
Detecting patients’ movements isn’t Shinozuka’s only goal, though. “In addition to solving the originally intended problem, using the sensor to monitor a larger population of Alzheimer’s patients could lead to a fundamental understanding of the causes of wandering and thus ways to mitigate or prevent it,” Shinozuka explains in his project proposal.
Who says that teenagers can’t solve the world’s problems?
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The App That’s Beautifying the Daily Commute
New York City subways are notoriously known for their clutter of ads pushing anything from weight loss miracles to online college courses. And since New Yorkers spend an excess of time underground traveling across the city’s seven boroughs, a new app is setting out to make that experience a little more pleasant.
NO AD is an augmented reality app designed to replace the abundance of mindless ads masking the city’s subway stations and trains with art.
“I think that overconsumption of advertising is detrimental to your mental health,” says street artist Jordan Seiler, who created the app. “Public space happens to be the only media space I can’t opt out of. I would advocate for the complete banning of advertising as a social health issue, the same way that we want to clean up toxic waste.”
Seiler enlisted 50 artists to contribute to the app, which works by opening the app and pointing the camera at the horizontal vinyl ads scattered across platforms at the city’s 468 stations.
NO AD uses feature tracking software to target which ads to filter out, excluding public health messages from the list. The campaign ran in NYC throughout the month of September and hopes to continue with other contributors from local galleries and museums. The app can be downloaded for free at app store or on Google Play.
As more people embrace the wearable market thanks to head displays like Google Glass, Seiler contends products like NO AD will become important in navigating the city’s ad-laden landscape.
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There’s So Much More to Burning Man Than Sex, Drugs and Debauchery
Every year, thousands of people gather in the scorching sun and blowing sand of Black Rock Desert for Burning Man, a weeklong festival in the middle of nowhere Nevada that celebrates art, music and culture and culminates in a massive bonfire. The event, known for its free-spirit nature and hedonism, is becoming immensely popular with the tech community, thanks to its focus on innovation and creativity — Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page have attended, as have Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
When you gather all types of people from across the world and take them off the grid (the event lacks cell phone service and relies on generators for power), brainstorming is bound to happen. The outcome? These three organizations that got their start in the Nevada desert have been burning brightly ever since.
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How to Create the Next Silicon Valley
When you hear tech, you probably think Silicon Valley.
But this area of California shouldn’t be the only locale that comes to mind, as cities across the U.S. are striving to become next big tech scene.
To help, Next City, along with innovation economy experts, developed a list of strategies that can help create a thriving tech scene in any city. Here are a few of their requirements.
A success story
In order for companies to make the commitment to an area, they need to see the proof that it’s actually a thriving environment, so a city needs at least one big winner. For example, in Raleigh, N.C., the success of Linux purveyor Red Hat has encouraged the launching of other local businesses.
Good transportation
Beyond one stellar company, a city also needs to be able to easily access venture capital. Any trip to a potential investor should last no more than a day, necessitating fast transportation between cities. According to Next City, trains are especially good for tech entrepreneurs since it’s easy to work while traveling on them.
A school
A major tech hub also needs the backing of an institution, most commonly a university. (After all, a former dean of an engineering school in the 1950’s is credited with launching Silicon Valley.) New York City, for example, has the support of New York University, and former mayor Bloomberg’s Applied Sciences NYC is helping to encourage entrepreneurial ideas as well.
Engineers
Tech-centric cities need engineers…hordes of them. As Next City points out, computer software programs aren’t the same as having qualified, knowledgeable engineers on your team.
An informal leader
To fully create a thriving tech scene, there needs to be networking events, hackathons, meetups, demo nights and game jams. Someone needs to take the initiative to coordinate these events — and it shouldn’t be a company’s CEO or founder.
To see the additional attributes needed to build the next Silicon Valley, click here.
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New York City Taxis Go Pink
On the busy streets of New York City, hailing a taxi can be impossible at times. And if you’re looking for one with a female driver? Well, the odds of finding that can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
That’s because fewer than three percent of the 115,000 licensed taxi, livery and limousine drivers in New York City are female. So for women who may not be comfortable with a male driver due to safety, religious or social reasons, the options are severely limited.
Which is why Stella Mateo invented SheRides – an app that quickly locates and orders a cab driven by a woman. (Stella is the wife of Fernando Mateo, the founder of the New York State Federation of Taxis.)
So, how does the app work? Once it’s downloaded, the user can search for a female driver nearby throughout New York City, Westchester County, N.Y. and Long Island, N.Y. Requested drivers are easy to spot curbside because they’re outfitted with a pink scarf.
Not only is the app making riders feel secure, but it’s also encouraging female drivers to get back into the taxi business, like 64-year-old Dinorah Decruz, who is coming out of a year of retirement. After being almost robbed by a male customer, the ability to focus on female clients makes Decruz feel safer.
Currently, about 100 female drivers have registered with the app, and while Mateo planned to launch it this month, she’s decided to wait until she has 500 drivers enrolled to help ensure its success.
Right now, though, she hopes that it will inspire more women to join the profession. After all, the app offers a safe and comfortable atmosphere — for both driver and passenger — which is exactly how 66 year-old Bronya Shaffer feels. “It’s having one more opportunity in our whole world, in all of our interactions everywhere, to know that I can choose to have a woman if I want,” she tells Times Union. “It’s kind of nice.”
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How Mapping Health Data Can Reduce Childhood Obesity
There is no blanket solution when it comes to fighting childhood obesity, especially in an urban setting where diverse cultures, economic disparity and access to parks and fitness activities can create a complex web of challenges.
Add insight from an abundance of community stakeholders including educators, parents and local lawmakers and finding a single solution to combatting the problem is near impossible. But an Austin, Texas, nonprofit may have found the key to getting everyone’s attention when it comes to understanding the problem: Visualization.
Children’s Optimal Health (COH) is charged with improving health for the city’s youth, but the nonprofit discovered that identifying the problem meant looking at the issue on a neighborhood level. Thanks to a Texas law that requires public schools to record fitness data on every student, COH used the information to create maps that identify “hotspots” that include social and economic information, according to Government Technology.
“You don’t have to know English or have an education to see this and say, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s my neighborhood,’” said COH Executive Director Maureen Britton.
Through data-sharing agreements with more than 12 central Texas education and health entities, COH aggregates student information including BMI and cardiovascular fitness scores, geo-tagged by neighborhood. Student names are removed and the data is completely anonymous — focusing only on identifying the issues families in these local communities face. As the Austin tech sector continues to bring more business and more people to town, COH is committed to ensuring low-income residents don’t fall by the wayside.
“There’s not enough attention paid to the struggles in Austin as the population outside of the tech industry grows. That’s our concern,” Britton said. “The more we bring this data to life through the maps, the more we get data-driven information to the right people.”
COH is also able to overlay the student health maps with other data sets, creating more granular narratives to show how the city can improve wellness initiatives. For example, a neighborhood’s proximity to a concentration of fast food restaurants or a community’s crime rate could contribute to the area’s obesity rate.
But perhaps it’s COH’s ability to network institutions that may otherwise not collaborate that might be most impressive about the nonprofit, as Government Technology points out. For example, getting hospitals involved in changing school physical education curriculum or schools to engage in interventions for existing infrastructure are just a few examples of how COH has found a way to get all community stakeholders on the same page.
As more cities collaborate on civic innovation initiatives, officials should take note the power of a picture and how it can reshape the conversation.
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This Valley Girl is Investing in Female Entrepreneurs
When most of us hear the term “valley girl,” we probably think about a ditzy girl with a pronounced accent. But that’s certainly not the case when it comes to Jesse Draper.
The daughter of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, Jesse Draper is the host of “The Valley Girl Show,” a show that highlights Silicon Valley giants — and most importantly, unknown female tech execs. Originating six years ago as a web series in Draper’s parents’ garage, the show progressed to being shown in taxis and restaurants and soon, will have a regular spot on the Fox cable channel. The show is categorized by Draper’s antics, and she often refers to herself as the “Ellen DeGeneres of Tech.”
After the first season, Draper realized that out of the 28 executives and founders she featured on her show, only three of them were women. So, Draper set out on a mission to change that. She soon found out that there isn’t necessarily a gap in a discrepancy in the ratio of female to male execs, but rather that women are less likely to take the spotlight. Many women still feel insecure and unconfident when it comes to their positions or desires to enter the tech field.
To help with this problem, Draper founded Valley Girl Ventures, which is an investment fund for female entrepreneurs. Draper saw that investment funds, as well as other successful women, are hesitant to take a risk on female-run businesses, so she took it upon herself.
So far, 10 start-ups have received help from Draper’s fund, including an athletic clothing company called Carbon38, a wearable tech company called Melon and the consignment furniture e-commerce company MoveLoot.
In addition to investing in women, Draper also hosts networking events across the country for them.
“I will always give any woman 30 minutes of my time,” Draper tells Fast Company. “There are female investors out there who are tired of seeing female-focused tech companies. But I’m like, ‘Bring it on.'”
With the success of Draper and other female execs, it seems to be a worthy investment.
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For Those Most in Need of Low Utility Bills, There’s Free Solar Energy
Normally, the families that can afford solar panels are the ones who are least in need of the energy savings that accompany the green technology. But now, a new program in Denver is giving some low-income households free access to solar energy.
The charter elementary school Academy 360 (80 percent of its students qualify for free or reduced lunch) in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood focuses on health and wellness in its curriculum and provides wholesome breakfasts and lunches to all its students and encourages plenty of exercise. And now, the new solar program, which was announced by Denver Mayor Michael Hancock last month, should bring more overall wellness (not to mention budget savings) to the families of each of the 125 students enrolled in the school.
Last year, Colorado became the first state to give people the option of accessing solar energy by subscribing to a solar garden connected to their houses via an energy grid, rather than purchasing and installing their own solar panels. This type of thing isn’t legal in every state, but four years ago Colorado legislators passed the Community Solar Act, allowing for partnerships between solar and electrical companies.
The first two solar gardens were located in Colorado Springs, and now a company called SunShare is bringing this option to Denver. The first subscribers will receive six-tenths of a kilowatt of solar energy and should see their home energy bills reduced by twenty percent, according to Anthony Cotton of the Denver Post.
“When I was your age, I used to see these magical solar panels on houses, and I wondered what they did,” Mayor Hancock said as he spoke to the Academy 360 community. “They were very expensive to have then, and they still are. But because of this project, we’ll all be able to share in affordable energy.”
SunShare CEO David Amster-Olszewski tells the Post that he thinks the program will bring a variety of benefits for the Academy 360 families: “It means they’ll be able to put healthier foods on the table or buy more sports equipment for their kids’ health.”
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The Easy Way to Find Out If Your Elected Officials’ Votes Are Biased
Making the decisions about the welfare our country are 435 representatives and 100 senators in Washington, D.C. Their responsibility is a hefty one, but so is ours when choosing the best one while voting.
At times, however, it seems almost impossible to keep tabs on our own elected officials, let along 535 of them. But with one click of a computer, that’s all about to change.
There’s a new browser plug-in called Greenhouse, and it’s exposing all the money that’s flowing into politicians’ campaigns.
Invented by 16-year old Nick Rubin, Greenhouse’s motto is “Some are red, Some are blue, All are green.” And that’s the purpose of this browser plug-in, to provide an accurate breakdown of politicians’ campaign contributions.
So how did a teenager become an aficionado of political campaign donations? Well, it all started when Rubin was giving a presentation on corporate personhood in the seventh grade. While doing research, he found that the sources of income for Congress members aren’t readily available.
Rubin then began learning how to code, and he decided to combine his two great passions – politics and coding – into one. From that, Greenhouse emerged.
The plug-in’s name is a play on words: Green for the color of money and house for the two houses of Congress. For Rubin, it’s also a metaphor for the purpose of his app.
“The name also implies transparency,” Rubin tells Vice. “Greenhouses are see through and they are built to help things thrive.”
Using Greenhouse is easier than, well, growing a plant. Once the plug-in is downloaded, the name of every politician will be highlighted in any article you’re reading. All you have to do is hover over the name and a little box will appear containing detailed contribution information‚ including amounts and where the money come from. This way, when your representative is supporting a bill, you can see if there’s money talking and swaying the vote.
All of the information comes from the 2012 election data, which was the last full election cycle. With the completion of the 2014 elections, Rubin plans to update the app to include those numbers. In the meantime, it’s possible to view 2014 data now by clicking on the name of the politician at the top of the window or the Opensecrets.org link in the pop-up.
Right now, Greenhouse is available for Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers, and it’s completely free. That’s because for Rubin, accessibility is the most important thing.
“That’s exactly why I designed Greenhouse with simplicity in mind, so that everyone — even kids — are able to understand it,” Rubin says. “Easy access to data empowers voters to make better decisions. Once people are informed, they will reject elected officials who are motived by money instead of principles.”
We certainly can hope, right?
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