The 7th Annual World Health Care Congress has come and gone, and with it the WHCC Affordable Health Exhibit and Awards. We are pleased to have welcomed 50 poster presentations to our exhibit hall. The organizations that either sent posters of their innovations or made the trip to Washington D.C. are among the most interesting and exciting players in the health care field.
On the conference’s second morning, we had the pleasure of presenting awards to three of our innovators. Patrick Beattie, a scientist at the Cambridge-based non-profit Diagnostics For All, took home our top award for DFA’s work on a diagnostic tool that is produced on regular printing paper. Used to detect a wide assortment of maladies, the pattended paper design uses microfluid channels and is about the size of a postage stamp.
We also awarded two honorable mentions. Harry Poliak accepted one of the awards on behalf of Safe Water Today, an organization that has developed the Siphon Water Filter. This low-cost device can be used in homes to remove harmful contaminents from drinking water. About 70,000 units are in use around the world. Erik Douglas, a post-doctoral scholar at the University of California Berkeley took home an honorable mention for CellScope, a device that merges a microscope with a cell phone, allowing for high-quality images at the cellular level. This point-of-care diagnostic tool system is capable of on-site diagnosis and wireless transmission of patient and location data to clinical centers for remote evaluation, patient management, and epidemiological surveillance.
We are extremely thankful to Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder and and managing director of Grameen Bank and Grameen Health, and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, for presenting the awards onstage at WHCC . Professor Yunus has done tremendous work around the globe to bring simple yet effective health solutions to the poor.
Thanks again to the many organizations who took the time to join us in Washington, D.C. We look foward to continuing to build the program.
