Researcher José Gómez-Márquez whose big thoughts shapes Little Devices", the lab he directs at MIT- uses toys to make affordable medical devices.The Little Devices lab takes a DIY approach to designing and building tools, mainly for healthcare. A plastic gun can be to create an alarm that alerts nurses when a patient’s IV bag needs changing. And a box of Lego-like building blocks can be used to modify existing medical equipment in numerous ways. He creates devices that bridge the gap between absence of mechanical or electrical engineering or fundamentals of product design. Marquez talks about that toys can be the engineered piece or the mechanical bits and pieces that you can harvest and re-purpose. Gómez-Márquez happens to have the backing of MIT, yet he is joined by a large and often-unrecognized population of DIYers who are practicing low-cost innovation. Historically, the public has looked to research and development labs at multinational corporations, universities and government labs — and has grown accustomed to expensive, complicated devices used more often in elite hospitals than jungles or slums. Not surprisingly, those who make DIY medical devices encounter doubt and even derision constantly. Such attitudes are a problem, because the DIY tools dreamed up by backyard inventors, part-time tinkerers and academics like Gómez-Márquez could improve — and even save — thousands of lives everywhere, not only in inner cities but in communities everywhere. We need to toss out our false assumptions about how, and where, new ideas come from — and recognize that innovation is everywhere.
Interesting video : Jose Gomez-Marquez, Little Devices Labs (MIT) -- PART 1 on Vimeo
