3D PRINTING IN LOW RESOURCE HEALTHCARE SETTINGS: ANALYSIS OF POTENTIAL IMPLEMENTATIONS

3D printing has gained significant momentum in the past ten years, and its unique advantages make it especially ideal for use in low resource healthcare settings, where many designs have already been successfully implemented. Yet, little has been studied on how 3D printing can be sustainably and functionally implemented in low resource healthcare systems as a manufacturing practice. In this report, three business models are proposed for this implementation: In-House Operator, Independent Operator, and Print Farm. These models were then tested over four months in Kisumu county, Kenya, at two workshops and seven public hospitals. I worked with local medical professionals, engineers, and government officials to create and test 3D printed medical products. Human centered design criteria were used to assess the models. All three business models proved to have individual distinct benefits and challenges for application. However, specific contextual considerations are necessary to decide which implementation is the most sustainable. Through these findings, others may begin implementing more robust 3D printing systems in low resource healthcare contexts throughout the globe

Revolutionising how we think about infrastructure

We need broad-scale revolutionary, rather than evolutionary, change if all seven billionpeople on the planet now, and those who follow us, are to have the opportunity to live well

Medthings AS – a break-through innovation with the handling of medication

Master’s in Applied and Commercial Biotechnology. Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Applied Ecology, Agriculture Sciences and Biotechnology.Patients depend on medicines to maintain health, prevent illness, manage chronic ailments and treat/improve disease conditions. However, there are growing reports indicating the misuse of medicines (not taken on time, skipped dosage, irregular or improper dosage) causing a great deal of challenge to the health sector. The major challenge lies with the elderly people (above 75 years) who often tends to forget their medications or are not adhered to it. At present, changing demography with a high number of elderly people and providing them quality health services is the biggest challenge. People aged 80 years or over use an average of 5.8 prescription drugs per person. The global spending on medicine reached 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars in 2018 and is set to exceed 1.5 trillion dollars by 2023, while the global automatic pill dispenser machine market accounted for 1,755 million dollars in 2016 and is estimated to reach 3,023 million dollars by 2023. Studies suggests that 25% of the emergency rooms are alone filled with patients taking wrong medications making it the cause of majority of the deaths and involving an expenditure of $10.30 billion annually. Several losses of life can be avoided if intake of medicine can be controlled. In addition, there is a huge medicine wastage due to unused/expired or skipped dosage. In 2019, Swedish pharmacies collected over 1,300 tonnes of medicinal residues (Wallêr, 2019), affecting the economy and well and the nature. Medicine management plays a very vital role in order to ensure the correct intake of medicine. Several approaches, from nurses to automated robots have been sought to ensure the correct use of medicines but none of them have been able to turn out completely effective. The variety of automated pill dispensers in the market with multiple functionality and features lack one thing or the other. Although every dispenser is produced with the aim of dispensing the correct medicine at the correct time with accurate dose, it fails to ensure whether the medicine is actually taken or just thrown away. This thesis was written with a purpose to investigate the specific needs for medicine management using Mobili 1) and to suggest a market entry strategy for it in the Swedish market. Several articles and literature reviews were considered to gather background knowledge on this issue and some primary data were collected through personal communications with 10 concerned persons. Furthermore, business analysis tools were also used to study the market and the target customers and to know about the competitors. Overall, an image that despite a hefty number of pill dispensers in the market, the exact number of them used at present and their comparison based on the price was not clear. An important finding was that although not quite great, but still there is possibility of entrance and success for Mobili with the target group of people above 75 years with chronic ailment and multi drugs prescriptions, or young age group with daily supplement intake having a busy schedule requiring reminder. Although there was a conflict of thoughts on the benefits and trustworthiness of the pill dispensers, yet the literature suggested that the elderlies are quite familiar with the technology and the health professionals also praise such automated pill dispensers. 1) An innovative and modern pill dispenser system produced by Medthings AS, Norwa

Adviser\u27s guide to health care: Volume 2, Professional Practices

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aicpa_guides/1801/thumbnail.jp

Adviser\u27s Guide to Health Care, Volume 1: An Era of Reform—The Four Pillars

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aicpa_guides/2720/thumbnail.jp

Digital Transformation in Healthcare

This book presents a collection of papers revealing the impact of advanced computation and instrumentation on healthcare. It highlights the increasing global trend driving innovation for a new era of multifunctional technologies for personalized digital healthcare. Moreover, it highlights that contemporary research on healthcare is performed on a multidisciplinary basis comprising computational engineering, biomedicine, biomedical engineering, electronic engineering, and automation engineering, among other areas

Ten Frontier Technologies for International Development

The report finds clear evidence of the potential of frontier technologies to contribute to social, economic and political development gains in a number of ways, by: • Driving innovations in business models, products and processes that provide new goods and services to ‘bottom of the pyramid’ consumers; • Providing the means by which to make better use of existing underutilised household and productive assets; • Catalysing increases in demand, nationally and internationally, which create new industries and markets, leading to macro- and microeconomic growth; and • Changing demand for labour and capital, leading to direct job creation and transformation of the workforce. For all of the potential upsides, potential downsides must also be considered. While it will largely be the private sector that will drive deployment of these technologies, the public sector through national regulation, as well as development financing, will have a major role in mediating the pace and direction of technological change, both to achieve development objectives, and to protect potential losers.As new technologies and digital business models reshape economies and disrupt incumbencies, interest has surged in the potential of novel frontier technologies to also contribute to positive changes in international development and humanitarian contexts. Widespread adoption of new technologies is acknowledged as centrally important to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. But while frontier technologies can rapidly address large-scale economic, social or political challenges, they can also involve the displacement of existing technologies and carry considerable uncertainty and risk. Although there have been significant wins bringing the benefits of new technologies to poor consumers through examples such as mobile money or off-grid solar energy, there are many other areas where the applications may not yet have been developed into viable market solutions, or where opportunities have not yet been taken up in development practice

Adviser\u27s guide to health care: Volume 1, An Era of Reform

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aicpa_guides/1800/thumbnail.jp

Emerging Technologies

This monograph investigates a multitude of emerging technologies including 3D printing, 5G, blockchain, and many more to assess their potential for use to further humanity’s shared goal of sustainable development. Through case studies detailing how these technologies are already being used at companies worldwide, author Sinan Küfeoğlu explores how emerging technologies can be used to enhance progress toward each of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and to guarantee economic growth even in the face of challenges such as climate change. To assemble this book, the author explored the business models of 650 companies in order to demonstrate how innovations can be converted into value to support sustainable development. To ensure practical application, only technologies currently on the market and in use actual companies were investigated. This volume will be of great use to academics, policymakers, innovators at the forefront of green business, and anyone else who is interested in novel and innovative business models and how they could help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This is an open access book

COVID-19 Kindness: Patterns of Neighborly Cooperation during a Global Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, which began in late 2019, brought unprecedented impact to healthcare, the economy, and social structure, and infrastructures experienced breakdowns in the initial phase. Demands in social and material needs surged, and they could not be met solely by unprepared infrastructures. Although local communities complemented them in previous disasters, physical distancing measures to prevent the spread of the virus undermined human connection, and local communities had to come up with novel ways to provide support. To develop insights from such adaptations of local communities, we explored civic activities for immediate disaster relief in multiple local communities across the United States and interviewed civic initiative organizers and attendees. In this paper, we articulate our findings into pattern language, a schema of reusable solutions for recurring problems. We present two patterns for community-based disaster recovery and discuss the effectiveness of codifying civic activities for disaster relief into patterns