A Minute to Think

skeptv:

Low-Cost Machine Aids Babies’ Breathing

via laboratoryequipment:

Rice Univ.’s low-cost, student-designed device that helps newborns in respiratory distress is one of three projects nominated this month to receive a grant of up to $2 million from the Saving Lives at Birth partners to speed deployment of the technology in Malawi in southern Africa.

Bubble continuous positive airway pressure — or bCPAP — devices are commonly used in the developed world to treat infants whose respiratory systems are underdeveloped or compromised by infection. However, at $6,000 each, the devices are often too expensive for hospitals in the developing world. The bCPAP device developed by Rice can be built for $160 and delivers the same therapeutic pressure as devices in hospitals in the developed world. Rice’s bCPAP device, a project in Rice’s Beyond Traditional Borders initiative, was developed at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen by seniors as their engineering design capstone project in 2010.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2012/07/low-cost-machine-aids-babies%E2%80%99-breathing