Improving health in the developing world, in particular,
requires access to affordable equipment for translational
research, diagnosis, and treatment. Currently, business acumen
and connections, charisma, and serendipity play an outsize role
in equipping users with devices. A functional supply chain that
can quickly link all web-connected users with a wide range of
innovative, reasonably-priced devices well-suited to their needs
means better health outcomes in low-resource settings. An
estimated 2 billion people in the world have inadequate access
to healthcare and around 9 million children die before reaching
their 5th birthdays. Despite the fact that there are at least
10,000 biomedical devices currently at use in the world, many of
them are not well suited to use in low-resource settings.
Devices created for the developed world are often highly
inappropriate in the developing world. How do end users and
those along the now-fragmented supply chain source, evaluate,
compare, and acquire the right devices for