CAEP presentation about stethoscope

[amymiller]

Pushed until 2016. Deadline is in September.

[tareko]

It turns out that I did indeed send a pitch for a talk for the 2014 CAEP. Here's the text, obviously out of date. This was submitted in 2013-12-06:

There is a popular resurgence of DIY ("Do it yourself") culture that has recently reached remarkable sophistication. This change from "consumer" to "maker" culture seems primed to continue as the costs of manufacturing technologies such as 3D printers continue to decrease in price and increase in availability.

This talk explains the philosophy behind Free/Open Hardware. It details specific case studies of medical hardware that was developed using a Free/Open Hardware model in which the technical plans and instructions are made available to anybody who wishes to recreate the device.

3D printers will be available during the talk, and will showcase a newly validated stethoscope design that is built to match the performance of gold standard stethoscopes while costing less than $10 to build from scratch. As a proof of concept, the printers will be printing this stethoscope head during the talk.

During the talk, we plan to announce the Free Medical Hardware Collaboration, whose goal is to foster and facilitate the development of open hardware medical devices. We have chosen and written specifications for five priority projects we think would both significantly improve medicine and popularize the idea of open hardware among bioengineers, physicians and allied health professionals. All of these projects are attainable with today's technology. At our laboratories at Western University and in the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, we will test and validate the hardware to ensure its specifications are no less than the current gold standard devices. The cost target will be <10% of the current market cost. All development will be in the open, and all results will be freely licenced for use, examination and modification.

[tareko]

Not gonna happen.