Related Research Articles
Appropriate technology is a movement encompassing technological choice and application that is small-scale, affordable by locals, decentralized, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sound, and locally autonomous. It was originally articulated as intermediate technology by the economist Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher in his work Small Is Beautiful. Both Schumacher and many modern-day proponents of appropriate technology also emphasize the technology as people-centered.
Golden rice is a variety of rice produced through genetic engineering to biosynthesize beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, in the edible parts of rice. It is intended to produce a fortified food to be grown and consumed in areas with a shortage of dietary vitamin A, a deficiency which each year is estimated to kill 670,000 children under the age of 5 and cause an additional 500,000 cases of irreversible childhood blindness. Rice is a staple food crop for over half of the world's population, providing 30–72% of the energy intake for people in Asian countries, and becoming an effective crop for targeting vitamin deficiencies.
A biomass cook stove is heated by burning wood, charcoal, animal dung or crop residue. Cook stoves are commonly used for cooking and heating food in rural households. Nearly half of the world's population, approximately 3 billion people, use solid fuels such as coal, wood, animal dung, and crop residues for their domestic energy needs. Among those who use indoor cooking stoves, the poorest families living in rural areas most frequently use solid fuels, where it continues to be relied on by up to 90% of households. Households in developing countries consume significantly less energy than those in developed countries; however, over 50% of the energy is for cooking food. The average rural family spends 20% or more of its income purchasing wood or charcoal for cooking. The urban poor also frequently spend a significant portion of their income on the purchase of wood or charcoal. Deforestation and erosion often result from harvesting wood for cooking fuel. The main goal of most improved cooking stoves is to reduce the pressure placed on local forests by reducing the amount of wood the stoves consume, and to reduce the negative health impacts associated with exposure to toxic smoke from traditional stoves.
PATH is an international, nonprofit global health organization based in Seattle, with 1,600 employees in more than 70+ offices around the world. Its president and CEO is Nikolaj Gilbert, who is also the Managing Director and CEO of Foundations for Appropriate Technologies in Health (FATH), PATH's Swiss subsidiary. PATH focuses on five platforms—vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, devices, and system and service innovations—to develop innovations and implement solutions that save lives and improve health, especially among women and girls.
Legal scholars, economists, activists, policymakers, industries, and trade organizations have held differing views on patents and engaged in contentious debates on the subject. Critical perspectives emerged in the nineteenth century that were especially based on the principles of free trade. Contemporary criticisms have echoed those arguments, claiming that patents block innovation and waste resources that could otherwise be used productively, and also block access to an increasingly important "commons" of enabling technologies, apply a "one size fits all" model to industries with differing needs, that is especially unproductive for industries other than chemicals and pharmaceuticals and especially unproductive for the software industry. Enforcement by patent trolls of poor quality patents has led to criticism of the patent office as well as the system itself. Patents on pharmaceuticals have also been a particular focus of criticism, as the high prices they enable puts life-saving drugs out of reach of many people. Alternatives to patents have been proposed, such Joseph Stiglitz's suggestion of providing "prize money" as a substitute for the lost profits associated with abstaining from the monopoly given by a patent.
JN-International Medical Corporation (JNIMC) is a U.S.-based biopharmaceutical corporation which since 1998 has been focused on developing vaccines and diagnostics for infectious disease for developing countries. This private corporation was founded in 1998 by Dr. Jeeri R. Reddy with the help of Dr. Kelly F. Lechtenberg in a small rural town, Oakland, Nebraska. From there it grew and expanded until in the year 2000 the corporation moved to Omaha, Nebraska.
Oxford University Innovation Limited (OUI) is a British technology transfer and consultancy company created to manage the research and development (R&D) of University spin-offs. OUI is a wholly owned subsidiary the University of Oxford, and is located on Botley Road, Oxford, England. OUI was previously known as Isis Innovation (1988-2016) and Oxford University Research and Development Ltd (1987-1988).
Reverse innovation or trickle-up innovation is an innovation seen or used first in the developing world, before spreading to the industrialized world. The term was popularized by Dartmouth professors Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble and GE's Jeffrey R. Immelt. Subsequently, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble published the book Reverse Innovation.
The Health Impact Fund is a proposed pay-for-performance mechanism that would provide a market-based solution to problems concerning the development and distribution of medicines globally. It would incentivize the research and development of new pharmaceutical products that make substantial reductions in the global burden of disease. The Health Impact Fund is the creation of a team of researchers led by the Yale philosopher Thomas Pogge and the University of Calgary economist Aidan Hollis, and is promoted by the non-profit organization Incentives for Global Health (IGH).
Innovations in International Health (IIH) was an innovation platform that facilitated multidisciplinary research to develop medical technologies for developing world settings at MIT. It was based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2008 through 2012. IIH's mission was to accelerate the development of appropriate and affordable health technologies by facilitating collaboration between researchers, users and health practitioners around the world.
VillageReach is a registered 501(c)(3) that works with governments to solve health care delivery challenges in low-resource communities. It is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, in the United States, with countries offices in Mozambique, Malawi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa. VillageReach's approach includes developing, testing, implementing, and scaling new systems, technologies and programs that improve health outcomes by extending the reach and enhancing the quality of health care. This manifests through supply chain and logistics improvements, information and communication technology, human resources for health, private sector engagement, and advocacy.
Some authors advocating patent reform have proposed the use of prizes as an alternative to patents. Critics of the current patent system, such as Joseph E. Stiglitz, say that patents fail to provide incentives for innovations which are not commercially marketable. Stiglitz provides the idea of prizes instead of patents to be awarded in order to further advance solutions to global problems such as AIDS.
Uniject is a disposable, pre-filled, single-use syringe which was developed to promote vaccination in developing countries. It was developed by PATH as part of the solution to the problem of delivering vaccines to areas which have insufficient medical workers to meet the needs of traditional, doctor-mediated vaccination programs.
The Appropriate Technology Collaborative is a U.S. Non-profit dedicated to designing everyday technologies for the global poor.
BioLite, a startup based in New York City, develops and manufactures off-grid energy products for both the outdoor recreational industry and emerging markets. The company is most well known for their flagship wood-burning stoves that use thermoelectric technology to produce usable electricity from the heat of their fires.
Artificial rice is a grain product made to resemble rice. It is usually made from broken rice, sometimes with the addition of other cereals, and often fortified with micronutrients, including minerals such as iron and zinc and vitamins, such as vitamin A and vitamin B.
The Leveraged Freedom Chair (LFC) was an all-terrain wheelchair made from bicycle parts.
BioAnalyt is a privately held product-innovation company based in Teltow, Germany. The company focuses on developing, manufacturing, and marketing portable rapid test kits. Being sold under the name iCheck, the kits measure the concentration of vitamin A, total carotenoids, iron, or iodine in food and biological fluids. The test kits are easy to use, provide quantitative results within several minutes time. Displaying an innovative alternative to the established laboratory methods. In addition to products, BioAnalyt provides a broad spectrum of services connected with control of food quality or food fortification; which analyses of large-scale coverage studies in developing countries.
Ecopreneurship is a term coined to represent the process of principles of entrepreneurship being applied to create businesses that solve environmental problems or operate sustainably. The term began to be widely used in the 1990s, and it is otherwise referred to as "environmental entrepreneurship." In the book Merging Economic and Environmental Concerns Through Ecopreneurship, written by Gwyn Schuyler in 1998, ecopreneurs are defined as follows:
"Ecopreneurs are entrepreneurs whose business efforts are not only driven by profit, but also by a concern for the environment. Ecopreneurship, also known as environmental entrepreneurship and eco-capitalism, is becoming more widespread as a new market-based approach to identifying opportunities for improving environmental quality and capitalizing upon them in the private sector for profit. "
Access to medicines refers to the reasonable ability for people to get needed medicines required to achieve health. Such access is deemed to be part of the right to health as supported by international law since 1946.
References
- ↑ "Patents for Humanity Awards 2015". United States Patent and Trademark Office.
- ↑ "Patents for Humanity Awards Ceremony at the White House". IP Watchdog Blog. 20 April 2015.
- ↑ "Patents for humanity: Special edition of Technology and Innovation". phys.org. 30 Oct 2014.
- ↑ "Patents for Humanity Winners Awarded at the White House". commerce.gov. 26 Apr 2015.
- ↑ "USPTO Renews Patents for Humanity Program". IP Watchdog Blog. 11 Apr 2014.
- ↑ "2018 Award Recipients". USPTO.
- ↑ "2013 Award Recipients". USPTO.
- ↑ Microsoft Wins "Patents for Humanity" Award For Infer.NET From USPTO - MSPoweruser