FENASCOL es la Federación Nacional de Sordos de Colombia, una importante organización que lucha para los derechos de las personas sordas de todo el país. FENASCOL tiene un excelente equipo de comunicación – aquí conocemos algunos de sus integrantes! Tienen una excelente página web con videos y mucha información.
IDB intern and MIT student Kristen Watkins recently interviewed Jose Gomez-Marquez, program director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Innovations in International Health (IIH). IIH and Gomez-Marquez work to design and commercialize appropriate medical technologies for the developing world.
IIH has invented many creative medical devices that solve developing world medical needs. An early technology was the Aerovax Drug Delivery System, a machine that can deliver many doses of inhalable vaccines to rural populations. This device eliminates the need for needles and other hazardous medical equipment, is affordable enough for the developing world, and does not require electricity to run. Jose also worked on a project called X out TB, a monitoring system for patients on tuberculosis drugs to improve drug compliance and reduce the creation of drug-resistant strains of TB. A new favorite being developed in the lab is a device called AirDX – it uses a robot plane to transport diagnostic tests from where they are taken to a lab, and costs less than $1000.
But what makes IIH’s devices truly innovative is the way they are developed. The group’s inventions are sparked by requests from someone in the developing world, and from there IIH works to fulfill these needs. Additionally, the process from deciding to work on a project to commercialization is fairly short – only two to three years. They do this by tapping into a number of resources so that they can get a prototype out earlier than most others and get into the field sooner to start testing.
While in the field, Jose and IIH also bring along MEDIKits, which he describes as “Lego kits, essentially” of parts that can be used to build medical technologies. Jose and his team run workshops in which he shows people in a community how to make certain medical devices, and then challenges them to come up with a better device or to solve a need using the parts in a kit. He says, “Almost every device integrates the user into becoming an inventor.”
Last summer, Jose and his team held a workshop in Managua, Nicaragua, together with the IDB, their local partners CIES and CARE, and a variety of disability organizations. The workshop focused on teamwork and innovations – people from a variety of backgrounds were put together to come up with solutions to issues that people with disabilities face. The participants were coached along by some typical Jose/MIT incentives: multi colored post-its and big bowls of M&Ms, or “brain food”, as Jose calls it.
When asked about the role of technology and innovation in international development, Jose said it had many roles – as an equalizer, a provider of solutions, and, if you use enabling technologies, to help these countries catch up to the developed world technologically. But what is most important, according to Jose, is the technology transfer – showing people how to use and make the technologies that he develops. “Fundamentally, when we think of technology if we can focus on how we empower, and then focus on scaling up, we will see much greater successes.”