Can You First Give a Background of the Project?

Can you first give a background of the project?

-This was one of the projects that was taught at the Design that matters,

-He was the instructor

-Co-Founder of Thinkcycle, Prasanga and Ileen they were students

-Prasanga came up with the idea

-Based on her experiences from Sri Lanka where there is no infrastructure

-She did a paper study, went to hospitals in Boston area

-Saw 18K incubators with electricity, temp control, etc.

-Story of parents putting their premi’s into shoeboxes and sticking them in the oven

-prepare food same time as helping premi

-Amy Smith – senior lecturer at MIT, won MacArthur Fellow,

• Committed her whole life to create appropriate technology for developing countries
• Created passive incubator for vaccines, using phase change material, maintain temp to transport vaccines
• Used phase change material to make portable easy transport incubator

-Team wanted to mimic Amy Smiths design

How did you get involved? Design? Process?

-Joined project after initial study

-Illeen, pras, and I came up with a tent structure, developed own structure with wire and cotton

-Give instructions on website to make themselves

-Master structure to house PCM

-Used one type PCM, hard to get.

-Goal to maintain that temp for 24 hours.

-Put PCM into blanket, boil structure

-ISSUE was that PCM was a mixture of wax Polymers, mix together to get right melting temp.

• Surface temp can go up/down

-Won prize, MIT Ideas competition, $5000,

• Bought temp equipment, PCM
• Ended up with a two material PCM

-Made a tri-layer structure

• Mapped PCM at 50 with 30 degrees and put it around blankets
• Temp stabilization

-Prasanga took job, Ileen graduated,

-Big Challenge

• was you need airflow, to give appropriate air exchange for infant to breath
• control flow, heat escaping from sides
• use much better insulating material than cotton
• make sure that the heat lost per second was == the heat given off
• Picked materials that could be locally obtained, they work with NDO’s
• Under $25

Can you give me more details on the PCM heating element?

-Reboil over and over again.

-Reboil for X minutes. 100-1000times.

-Left at D.Lab, property of Amy Smith or Prasanga.

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What is the current status of the project?

-8 months, plus Summer

Why did you choose Sri Lanka?

-Field testing, Prasanga went somewhere….

Did you do any testing?

-Tested at normal room temp, work better in a warm climate?

-Will be hard, testing at night. If we can get it working from 10-12 hours night.

If you could still be working on it, what would you improve on?

-What assumptions did they make that WE could relax to get this out in a big way

Do you have a business plan?

-Led by Prasanga

-Open source design

-any local NDO could produce it locally

Do you have a prototype? Why was not more done?

-Most champions left

-Other two people had moved

-Was sidelined

-Still one of the better projects, so Tim’s trying to pick it up again

-Everyone got it, straight forward,

-Interested in expanding out