Pulse oximeters measure important values that indicate health - your heart rate and most importantly your blood oxygen saturation (or how much oxygen your blood is carrying). However, they can be big machines at $6000 or more portable ones that still require the use of expensive disposable sensors. In less industrialized countries like Vietnam, these western-made pulse oximeter are donated but often end up in the trash as they cannot be easily shipped back for fixing. A low-resource setting clinic cannot afford to continuously monitor all patients, so western-designed pulse oximeters are not compatible with those needs.
A team of MIT and RISD students, in collaboration with Boston-based design firm Design That Matters, sought out to develop an all-in-one pulse oximeter specifically for low-resource hospital needs. The above presentation outlines the patent-pending device we created.
Preliminary Review Presentations
