Spotlight

A lab in a backpack

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Transitioning Technologies from Labs to LDCs Workshop at Rice University's Institute for Global Health Technologies.

The workshop was an excellent opportunity to learn about some great new health point-of-care diagnostic technologies, point-of-use water purification technologies, and also many of the regulatory hurdles that must be overcome to get products to market, as well as the many groups whose purpose is to support those working toward this goal.

Health technologies can save lives, lower costs

Recently, UNICEF announced that child mortality has dropped below nine million deaths per year for the first time in recorded history. The drop can be attributed, in part, to the fact that health technologies like vaccines are reaching more children in the developing world, where the vast majority of these deaths occur. Many leaders in global health, including philanthropic powerhouse Bill Gates, have encouraged researchers to focus on creating health technologies for the developing world, where function outweighs form and prices get too expensive very quickly.