WIND-UP or pedal-powered medical instruments could soon be giving Third World doctors access to much of the lifesaving electrical gadgetry common in the West. That鈥檚 the latest idea from Freeplay Energy, the company that has successfully marketed the clockwork radio.
While launching a range of miniature wind-up radios and cellphone chargers in London last week, Freeplay鈥檚 chief executive Rory Stear said that medical devices would be next to benefit from the firm鈥檚 person-powered generators. In these, a user turns a crank to spin a dynamo, generating electricity that鈥檚 stored in rechargeable batteries. Technology chief John Hutchison says the medical devices that Freeplay plans to develop include a defibrillator, a fetal heart monitor, a blood oxygen monitor and a number of probing instruments that use electric light sources, such as opthalmoscopes.
Freeplay will use a pedal-powered generator to charge up its defibrillator, the emergency device that uses a pulse of electricity to restore the heartbeat of cardiac arrest patients. The generator will charge a large capacitor that will then deliver between 100 and 300 joules of electrical energy through two electrodes held against a patient鈥檚 chest. It should only take between 10 and 30 seconds to charge the device up. Freeplay plans to launch a variant of the pedal generator for laptop computer users next year.
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But the fetal heart monitor 鈥� important for checking if an unborn baby is in distress during labour, for example 鈥� could be a much simpler wind-up unit with a low-powered LCD display. The first products are expected sometime in 2003, says Hutchison.
鈥淭hese might be good in the middle of nowhere or where batteries are scarce,鈥� says Andrew Smith, an expert in critical care at Britain鈥檚 Medical Devices Agency.
Green activist Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop chain, backs Freeplay鈥檚 move into medicine. 鈥淓veryone should support products like these that have a social dimension to them,鈥� she says.