A device developed to help detect pneumonia at a low-cost has won the student category of Fast Company’s 2017 Innovation by Design Awards.
The Tabla device was created by students from the University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley. The device uses sound waves to diagnose pneumonia and has been designed to work alongside percussive physical examinations, the common method for diagnosing pneumonia. The current clinical gold standard for detecting pneumonia is a chest x-ray, though the cost of this method can limit access.
The award’s judging panel included Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler and 99% Invisible host Roman Mars. The awards highlight the best design ideas across a range of industries and featured over 2,500 entries with only 14 winners.
According to WHO, pneumonia accounts for 16% of all deaths of children under five years old. Only one third of children receive the antibiotics they need and the disease costs the US around $109 million per year.
Tabla previously won the Big Ideas at Berkeley competition and has received support from UCSF. Its developers, Adam Rao, Chen Bao and Jorge Ruiz spoke to abc7News about the device, saying that their next step is to gather sound samples from 100 healthy patients and 100 suffering from pneumonia and to test it on a trail with Narayana Health hospitals in India.
