open source hardware

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3-D Printing Offers Quick, Cost-effective Solution to Help Train Aspiring Nurses

Press Release | University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) | June 20, 2018

As a regular attendee of conferences on healthcare simulation around the world, Dr. Lori Lioce was already well aware of the growing trend of using 3-D printing to create task trainers – clinical simulators that allow nursing students to repeatedly practice a specific skill in preparation for providing healthcare in the real world. What she needed was access to the technology. So the clinical associate professor in the College of Nursing at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) turned to Norven Goddard, a research scientist at UAH’s Systems Management and Production (SMAP) Center, for help.

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3D Printing Educator Spotlight On: Joshua Pearce, PhD, Associate Professor, Michigan Tech

Sarah Anderson Goehrke | 3D Print | July 27, 2017

As the global population continues to expand massively, with an estimated 7.5 billion people alive today, sustainability is becoming an ever-more-pressing concern. It takes a lot of energy to support a large and growing population, especially with the living standards seen in the 21st century. In the US, where capitalism looms large, affordability poses another issue as many goods and services carry with them a hefty price tag. At the convergence of a few major areas looking toward the future of sustainability is Dr. Joshua M. Pearce, who has engaged in extensive work with 3D printing, solar power, and open source research as he has headed thorough studies examining these areas and working to educate students and industry alike...

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5 Ways to Invigorate Education with Raspberry Pi

Recently I was invited to talk to a group of eighth grade students about the Raspberry Pi. Of the 15 students and three teachers there, only a few had heard of the Raspberry Pi. None had ever held one in their hand, nor did they know how to set one up or even where to look for information to do so. I spent 40 minutes talking to them and inviting them to explore the Raspberry Pi and the wealth of high-quality, open source software that comes with it. They were energized and eager to learn more...I think something needs to be done, so I am inviting fellow open source advocates to join me in making minor investments in their communities to move the ball forward.

Autodesk Announces $100 Million Spark Investment Fund, The World’s First 3D Printing Investment Program

Press Release | Autodesk | October 30, 2014

Autodesk, Inc...has announced that it intends to invest up to $100 million in 3D printing companies over the next several years. The Spark Investment Fund...is the first of its kind for the 3D printing industry and will invest in entrepreneurs, startups and researchers who push the boundaries of 3D printing technology and accelerate the new industrial revolution. Read More »

Blue Cross to Present the Faces of Fearless Healthcare Innovation Award with Not Impossible Labs

Press Release | Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Not Impossible Labs | August 29, 2017

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) will present the Faces of Fearless Healthcare Innovation Award as part of the 2018 Not Impossible Awards show at CES® 2018 in Las Vegas. The Faces of Fearless Healthcare Innovation Award is included in the Not Impossible Awards show and recognizes technological innovation that advances health and wellness. The award exemplifies the values of the Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) Faces of Fearless℠ campaign, which celebrates the stories of people who are overcoming challenges to live their healthiest lives.

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Clones Welcome in Scientific Hardware

In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Open Hardware I review emerging business models for open source hardware. Many of these models are borrowed from the free and open source software industry and will no doubt be familiar to you. However, traditional companies should also take a close look at adding open source hardware to their strategy. One way a company can start the transition to the open source way is to open source a single product to drive sales of its other products. A firm can open source the hardware they sell in order to expand the market of other parts of their product line...

Design and Produce 3D Printed, Custom Breast Prosthetics

As the market for 3D printers has moved from sophisticated, experienced designers into the mass consumer market, individuals are saving substantial money with pre-designed, DIY products made on 3D printers. These opportunities are poised to increase due to the Free Open Source 3D Customizer, a libre, 3D model customizer that anyone can use to create their own 3D printed designs. To demonstrate how the software works and the possibilities that it creates, I'll show how breast cancer survivors and others can use the Free Open Source 3D Customizer to design and produce 3D-printable external breast prosthetics.

EHI Live UK Conference Hosts State–of-the-Art Open Source Health IT Solutions

Press Release | EHI Live | October 20, 2015

EHI live, now in its 8th year, is the UK's leading exhibition for digital health, hospital information and healthcare innovation. The event attracts visitors and delegates from around the UK and beyond who are keen to learn from industry leaders and examine new technologies. The EHI Live exhibition gives visitors the chance to see the best that NHS IT suppliers have to offer. EHI Live will take place in Birmingham, UK, Nov 3-4, in Hall 1 at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham. The event will host more than 250 exhibitors showcasing the latest advances in IT healthcare solutions. It will also feature free-to-attend conferences that will address the major healthcare IT industry issues such...[including] the annual HANDI Health Apps conference which features its own specialist app zone, a feature dedicated to the use of open source technology.

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Girls' Skills Are Needed in Tech

ChickTech is based in Portland but plans to be nationwide by 2016. After interviewing Jennifer Davidson about how ChickTech gets girls involved in tech, I have high hopes it's even sooner. The non-profit targets girls who would never nominate themselves to participate in a tech workshop and who wouldn't dream of a career in tech. Why? Because they've never had someone believe their skills were valuable in that world...

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Google Builds a New Tablet for the Fight Against Ebola

Cade Metz | Wired | March 20, 2015

Jay Achar was treating Ebola patients at a makeshift hospital in Sierra Leone, and he needed more time. This was in September, near the height of the West African Ebola epidemic. Achar was part of a team that traveled to Sierra Leone under the aegis of a European organization called Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders. In a city called Magburaka, MSF had erected a treatment center that kept patients carefully quarantined, and inside the facility's high-risk zone, doctors like Achar wore the usual polythene "moon suits," gloves, face masks, and goggles to protect themselves from infection...

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Google Fights Ebola

Staff Writer | Google | November 16, 2014

While governments around the world were unsuccessfully trying to make up their minds about the best approach, sitting around and debating and discussing about the most valid ways to combat Ebola …Google came up to the plate in November and its CEO announced it would pledge $2 for every dollar donated through its website. They set up a specific URL onetoday.google.com/fightebola to explain this original social action and invite people worldwide to contribute to this worthwhile, timely cause...

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How Citizens Become Scientists with Open Hardware

Eymund Diegel, a research coordinator for Gowanus Canal Conservancy, shares this tidbit during the first clip of the new Open Source Stories documentary, "The Science of Collective Discovery." He's setting out in a canoe on an inner-city canal that is polluted and struggling to get the help it needs. That's the theme of citizen science it seems: people and places in need who are not getting the help and resources they deserve taking matters into their own hands. Why are they not getting the help they need in the first place? The reason is shockingly simple yet a typical problem: Where's the evidence?

How Open Source Hardware Increases Cybersecurity

Hardware hacks are particularly scary because they trump any software security safeguards-for example, they can render all accounts on a server password-less. Fortunately, we can benefit from what the software industry has learned from decades of fighting prolific software hackers: Using open source techniques can, perhaps counterintuitively, make a system more secure. Open source hardware and distributed manufacturing can provide protection from future attacks...security is one of the core benefits of open source. While open source is not inherently more secure, it allows you to verify security yourself (or pay someone more qualified to do so). With closed source programs, you must trust, without verification, that a program works properly.

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How to Contribute to Open Source Healthcare Projects for COVID-19

Many of those that are familiar with the maker movement, including me, believe there is a significant opportunity to apply open source design principles and mass-scale collaborative distributed manufacturing technologies (like open source 3D printing) to at least partially overcome medical supply shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic...Many people agree there is enormous potential with the approach despite the challenges and have started to self-organize to develop open source hardware to fight COVID-19. The largest group is Project Open Air. They are a group of "Helpful Engineers" who have congregated to aid in the COVID-19 pandemic response by developing both open source hardware and open source software. The Helpful Engineers are working on medical devices such as open source ventilators, to create a solution that can be quickly reproduced and assembled locally worldwide. Read More »

Mainstream Academia Embraces Open Source Hardware

Twenty years ago, even staunch proponents of free and open source software like Richard Stallman questioned the social imperative for free hardware designs. Academics had barely started to consider the concept; the number of papers coming out annually on the topic were less than could be counted on someone's fingers. Not anymore! Not only has the ethical authority of Stallman embraced free hardware and free hardware design, but so has the academic community. Consider the graph below, which shows the number of articles on open source hardware indexed by Google Scholar each year from 2000 to 2017. In the last 17 years, the concept of open source hardware has erupted in ivory towers throughout the world. Now more than 1,000 articles are written on the topic every year.