Background

Cervical cancer kills over 260,000 women each year, with 80 percent of these cases occurring in the developing world. Fortunately, this disease is highly preventable. Regular screenings using standard gynecological tools can help identify pre-cancerous lesions on the cervix and allow them to be treated.

A medical diagnostic procedure called Colposcopy uses magnification optics and illumination to allow health care providers to better distinguish healthy from abnormal tissues. Unfortunately, the cost and size of a standard colposcope limits its deployment to much of the developing world. Tackling this challenge is a North Carolina-based organization, Imagyn, that has developed a low-cost, hands-free, head-mounted colposcope for use in the developing world. Working prototypes of the award-winning device, known as a CerviScope, will debut next year in Haiti.

Process

Imagyn, along with their partner organization Family Health Ministries (FHM), has teamed with EWB-SFP’s Appropriate Technology Design Team (ATDT) to develop 5-10 working, alpha-stage prototypes of their CerviScope. The prototype units will be used for field tests by medical technicians at the beginning of 2008.

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