Not just for the 3rd world

Knowing just how overpriced medical hardware tends to be in America's profit-driven healthcare system gives one pause but there's hope, especially when talented scientists work with innovative techs to create inexpensive and elegantly designed hardware that makes a difference, as seen by this very cool CerviScope,  developed by David Walmer and Duke's biomedical engineering group.

The first step was to reorient the lenses. Surgical loupes are custom-designed for each physician. “A rep comes to measure the distance between my eyes because different people’s eyes are different distances apart,” Walmer says. “But if we are going to do this globally, we can’t manufacture each one personally. So we asked them to build a slot so you could move the lenses back and forth, right and left, until they’d line up with whoever’s eyes were looking through the devices,” Walmer says.

Then one of the firm’s engineers cannibalized the lenses from a $2 pair of reading glasses and incorporated them with a pair of binoculars. “There was nothing on the market that gave us the magnification but also focused up close,” said Dan Fucella, the firm’s head. The combination worked: Reading glasses are designed for close viewing, binoculars to magnify objects at a distance, allowing a user to quickly switch perspectives, the better to see cervical changes. Walmer was thrilled as the device approached completion. He regularly tested the latest iteration of his scope on patients. “I love taking a problem, problem solving and bringing together people who can go back and forth over time to solve that problem,” Walmer says. “Working in Haiti is a slow, steady process, so this matched up with it.”

How cool is this? :)