Search results for:

…refractory vision errors, half of which go uncorrected, and one in eight have psycho-social issues. Compounding these problems is the episodic care-seeking behavior, fueled by the need to pay out-of-pocket for health services delivered by private providers in a fragmented fashion. Solution The child health venture AddressHealth piloted a novel and scalable, tele-enabled, school-based health centre model in…and first-contact care, dental treatments; vision services, health education, nutritional advice, psycho-social care and chronic disease interventions to children in low-income schools. An onsite nurse would be supported by a multidisciplinary team and a technology platform, consisting of a tele-video link and a school-based electronic health record. Each unit would be sustainable with revenues from…

Issue Nearly two million people – mostly women and children – die every year from respiratory diseases related to indoor cooking smoke. Urban households in East Africa continue to rely on charcoal and spend up to 50% of their income to purchase fuel. Solution BURN designs and locally mass produces clean-burning cook stoves that offer a 50 to 70% reduction in fuel consumption, as well as reduced emissions. The funded project enabled BURN…rounds of market research, prototype development and focus group discussions were conducted, in order to develop a high-quality product at a low cost. Outcome The performance metrics for both the JikoSawa and Jikokoa™ include:  reduced particulate emission by 61%; charcoal savings by 50% and reduced cooking time by 50%. JikoSawa retails for 20 to 30% less,…

Issue Although vaccinations are one of the great achievements in human health, many diseases are globally recalcitrant because vaccines must be refrigerated, adding significantly to their cost. In resource-limited locations in developing countries, vaccine refrigeration is difficult and is one of the barriers to widespread deployment. According to the World Health Organization, 2.5 million deaths …in cost savings in distribution. Previous research has shown that, by coating powdered vaccines with the polymer pullulan, vaccine viruses can be kept stable at room temperature for months. Pullulan is a safe, food-grade polysaccharide that has the unique ability to be a very good oxygen barrier, while readily dissolving in water. In the first…

…burden nationally. Solution The project developed an innovative assay based on cervicovaginal swabs and a process called digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) that aimed help make self-screening for cervical cancer possible and accessible. The technique used self-administered cervicovaginal swabs to detect oncogenic HPV, the virus that causes cervical cancer. The assay cost less than a pap smear at high throughput and could be performed by women in…to analyze results. A pilot study was run in Canada to validate the technology before running an implementation study in Nairobi, Kenya. The lab in Kenya was setup in partnership with AMREF Kenya. The study in Kenya included women with and without cervical cancer in order to determine the validity, sensitivity, and specificity of the…

Issue The World Health Organization estimates that 20 to 50 million people each year are injured in traffic accidents, of which about 90% occur in low- and middle-income countries, where resources for treatment are insufficient. Commercial power tools are widely available for orthopedic surgery, whereas expensive surgical equipment ($30,000 or more) is often unavailable, and donated surgical drills fail in low-resource settings because technical support and replacement parts are unavailable. Orthopedic surgeons in low-resource settings often use manual drills or non-sterile hardware drills, resulting in permanent disability for many. Solution Arbutus Medical…a measure for how far is drilled through the bone in the soft tissue. While differences in plunge depth between the hardware and surgical drills were not significant, plunge depth was significantly larger in the manual drill when compared to both power drills. The differences in drilling time per hole between the hardware and surgical drills…

…is widespread, all over the world. One-third of the world’s population is infected with T. gondii, which can cause toxoplasmosis in the developing fetus and is dangerous for people whose immune systems are compromised through disease or chemotherapy. T. gondii is also recognized as a major cause of abortion in farm livestock, such as sheep and goats. Solution The project aimed to develop a multi-protein, sub-unit vaccine against Toxoplasma gondii by taking the following steps: ·         Isolating and characterizing T. gondii ·         Amplifying and cloning in expression plasmid the…SAG1, ROP18 and AMA1 was achieved. However, the project team ran out of time before formulating nanoparticles of rec-SAG1, rec-ROP18 and rec-AMA1, and conducting the immunization trials with mice. After optimizing the process to screen human samples to detect Toxoplasmosis, the team plans to apply for a scale-up grant to develop a local ELISA kit.

…Current CE products are expensive and have other limitations, including limited battery time, and a low frame rate and size. Solution The project team proposed a solution to enhance the current approach to capsule endoscopy by using imaging algorithms that work on special properties of endoscopic images, and result in higher frame rate and size.…PCB modules, each having a diameter of 16mm and total length of 36mm. The system has smartdevice connectivity, enabling remote diagnosis and monitoring.Two different Android apps have been developed for both data (or image) storing (named WCE Logger) and image viewing and analysis (WCE Viewer). WCE Logger is used to record data and as a real-time viewer.…review and examine the captured images offline. Both the algorithm and the prototype have been validated through experiments and animal trials. Grand Challenges Canada's award helped in leveraging funding from Western Economic Development (WED) Canada for $99,000 for two years, for lab infrastructure to support the research and development of the next generation endoscopic system. 

Issue Close to 600,000 people die from malaria infection annually, with Sub-Saharan Africa suffering the brunt of the mortality. A contributing factor is the emergence of antimalarial resistance to the best drugs available, including artemisinin and its partner drugs, such as piperaquine. Solution A bold approach has been proposed to identify novel agents that reverse…the capacity to inhibit Hsp90, kill malaria parasites in the test tube, and prolong survival of mice when used in combination with artemisinin, without exhibiting untoward toxicity. The plan is to conduct further trials with 21A-like derivatives after patent protection is achieved. Results of this work were discussed in conference presentations and were being prepared for publication. 

…viral load can aid in diagnosing acute HIV infection, determining prognosis and disease progression and aiding therapeutic monitoring. Quantifying the viral load in plasma enables a clinician to assess the success of treatment and detect treatment failure prior to the onset of clinical symptoms. Solution With the Rapid and Early-detection HIV RNA Test project, GeneBio…RNA in disease specimens. The aim was also to develop a test that would yield results in under an hour, is easy to administer and is suitable for mass-production at $1–5 cost per test. Outcome Testing showed the synthetic HIV DNA could be detected by the DASL RAPID™ test.  A manufacturing process was also developed…

Regulatory approval for diagnostics is costly, lengthy and lacks transparency in many countries. It is seen as a major barrier to innovation and access. We seek to survey the regulatory landscape and develop a clearly defined set of standards and a critical path for streamlining the approval of a new generation of diagnostics that are …