Some of the toughest global challenges are related to health. Thankfully, innovators around the world are solving these pressing obstacles, supported by a system that protects their intellectual property. Innovate4Health’s recent report highlights the tremendous, real-world impact that breakthrough discoveries and ideas can have when innovation is fostered and supported.
The report spotlights 25 on-the-ground innovations and the passionate, entrepreneurial inventors behind them who are helping solve health challenges around the world. Collectively, these 25 case studies build upon the decades-long history of innovation and entrepreneurship leading to better health around the world. The report sends a clear message: intellectual property rights drive the creation of life-saving innovations.
These 25 case studies build upon the decades-long history of innovation and entrepreneurship leading to better health around the world.
Among others, the report highlights the following challenges and innovative solutions:
- Supporting medical devices in environments where power is unreliable or absent. A team of inventors from Stanford University developed Embrace, a portable infant warmer for remote areas that lack power to consistently and effectively incubate newborn infants at risk of hypothermia.
- Providing quick, affordable point-of-care diagnoses. The Urine Malaria Test (UMT) – developed by Dr. David Sullivan from Johns Hopkins University – provides a rapid, accurate, convenient and cost-effective test compared with others, and can be self-administered in a patient’s home.
- Supplying clean water and sanitation in areas that lack infrastructure. SATO (“Safe Toilet”) is a plastic toilet device that reduces odor and disease transmission caused by ineffective disposal of human waste, which may be common in developing countries that lack sufficient sanitation infrastructure.
- Helping vulnerable people overcome physically challenging environments. GRIT’s Leveraged Freedom Chair (LFC), is a wheelchair built from affordable steel and bicycle parts that are often available in more remote areas, which helps bring greater mobility to those with physical disabilities in the developing world.
- Providing health care to people in remote or inaccessible areas. Proximie cofounders, Ahmad and Hachach-Haram, developed an augmented-reality technology that helps surgeons in rural regions and conflict zones get remote assistance and training from anywhere in the world.
Critics of intellectual property fail to see that these innovations may not exist without an underlying intellectual property system supporting inventors. This collection of case studies reinforces the important role of intellectual property in bringing life-saving solutions from creative idea to on-the-ground reality.
To read the full report from Innovate4Health, click here.
