Enabling Technologies

Guilherme Vanoni Polanczyk from Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil will test their new method Pixel Averages for Auxological Assessment (PIXA3) that enables parents at home to frequently and precisely measure height during early childhood to help better detect and monitor growth defects in low-resource settings. The current standard for accurately measuring height requires specialized equipment and trained staff, and is thus unsuitable for frequent application.

Debjani Paul, Ninad Mehendale and Ammar Jagirdar from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in India will develop a simple system to detect sickle cell disease for use by untrained individuals in tribal populations in India in order to reduce infant mortality rates. Current diagnostics require expensive equipment and trained personnel, and are often inaccessible to the rural populations most in need.