Low-cost otoscope developed to diagnose hearing loss in developing countries

A large proportion of people with hearing loss live in developing countries, particularly in Africa, South Asia, and the Asia-Pacific region. Although many of these cases could be avoided through primary prevention, few countries in these regions have been able to implement large-scale prevention programs. The level of smart phone access is however often relatively high.

With this in mind, the students, who belong to the Engineering World Health group, designed and built a model otoscope with red, blue and green LED lights that they hope will in the near future be made into a kit for easy production around the world. “We have a lot of electrical engineers on the team, and they were really excited about doing something with optics,” says Tessa Bronez, Vice-President of the group and a recent graduate in biomedical engineering. “We thought coming into our senior year, we should try to take some initiative and get more people involved and come up with something exciting,” says Robert Hunt, design team leader.

Their solution is an otoscope that they created using a 3-D printer, standard lenses and a simple motherboard. Importantly, the 3-D-printed clamp on the device can be adjusted to hold any smartphone. The total production cost of the otoscope is USD 6.42, hundreds of dollars cheaper than currently available devices.

Source: MedicalXpress