No doubt about it...some of the best ideas come out of the kitchen. Undergrad students in a Rice University class called Bioengineering and World Health were given a series of design challenges during this past academic year. The professor of the class, Rebecca Richards-Kortum, works closely with clinicians in the developing world. She often hears a common refrain -- that it's hard for them to accurately and reliably diagnose anemia, which affects millions of people across the globe.
To test for anemia, you usually need to spin a small blood sample, which separates the red blood cells from the plasma. The cells go to the bottom of the test tube, and then researchers use a caliper to determine the percentage of red blood cells. A low percentage of blood cells points toward anemia.
The spinning is usually done with a battery, or electric-powered, centrifuge. Major issue: many clinics in the developing world don't have reliable, or cheap, access to either of those power sources. So, Richards-Kortum put it to her students: "Develop an inexpensive way to assess red blood cell levels in a situation where electricity wasn't available."
Students Lauren Theis and Lila Kerr took up the challenge. They started doing research. They thought about trying bicycles, and spinning toys. They toyed with a Harvard idea: using an egg beater and capillary tubes. In the end, they didn't go with the eggbeater, but they did stay in the kitchen. As the above picture shows, the students took a pump-action salad spinner, and modded it out with a special base (food containers and combs) to hold small vials of blood.
Kerr says: "The user pumps it for about 10 minutes. You pump it about 200 times per minute, which sounds harder than it actually is. We pumped it for 20 minutes, and it really wasn't too bad. And that spins it at about 950 RPM, which is enough to separate the blood."
Total cost? Around $35. A small battery or electric centrifuge can run in the hundreds of dollars. The salad spinner model, dubbed The Sally Centrifuge after a Rice landmark, can hold up to 30 samples, as opposed to only four.
But will it hold up in the field, especially in the often harsh conditions of rural health clinics in the developing world? Well, Kerr and Theis will see for themselves this summer. Kerr is taking one to Ecuador for field testing. Theis is taking one to Swaziland.
"Maybe even just getting it there on the plane will be a good indication of how it will hold up," Theis says. "But it's very durable. It's got a very hard outer container, so we're hoping that it's durable enough that if it suffers a fall, and heat and weather and stuff, it will hold up. But we're going to find out."The idea is that the students will get feedback from clinicians, and then bring new ideas back to Rice in the fall. The feedback will be incorporated into version 2.0.
Don't you just love it when kitchen gadgets and better global health come together? Me too. You can hear more about The Sally Centrifuge here.
Photo: Jeff Fitlow
Tags: Biotechnology, DoGooding, Engineering, Health, Saving Energy
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