Friday, February 5, 2010

George Whitesides Discusses Designing a "Lab on a Stamp"




This talk is listed at the Ted.com site as "A Lab the Size of a Postage Stamp," but it should really be "A ON a Postage Stamp."  He talks about the ingenious way his group has designed "devices" for medical diagnostics from paper.  This makes it very inexpensive as well as easily disposable - no sharps or bio-waste to worry about, you can just burn the device when you are done.

George Whitesides is an Organic Chemist from Harvard - I would love to hear him talk about his work on Self-Assembly, but this is pretty cool too.  To quote from his Bio at Ted:
He's co-founded a nonprofit called Diagnostics for All that aims to provide dirt-cheap diagnostic devices, to provide healthcare in a world where cost is everything.
While sharing some of his experience, he also has some interesting observations of the nature of our society, given that the cost of healthcare has been such a topic of discussion lately.

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