"Smile", a vaccine cooling system, displayed at the "Creators for Good" pavilion
Good ideas smile at the "Expo"... and dazzle Bill Gates
Reem Al-Hashemi accompanied Bill Gates during his tour of the "Expo".
From the source
Kitty Liao: "(Expo 2020 Dubai) is a great platform to encourage innovation and support this type of project."
picture
Seven years ago, the founder and CEO of the British company Ideapatique, Kitty Liao, began her journey with creativity, when she decided to establish her award-winning social enterprise, and launched her first product known as “Smile”, which is a vaccine cooling system, which is currently shown in "Creative People for Good" pavilion from "Expo Live".
The founder of Microsoft and the humanitarian and charitable businessman, Bill Gates, who recently visited the "Expo Dubai", and was accompanied during the visit by the Minister of State for International Cooperation and Director General of "Expo 2020 Dubai", Reem bint Ibrahim Al Hashemi, a great interest in this project.
"I participated in the Humanitarian Action Hackathon while working for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and it was the first time that I learned about all the serious problems related to delivering vaccines to remote areas," Liao said.
She added: "I was shocked, because many vaccines spoil before reaching their destination, due to the rugged terrain, on a journey that often takes several days, and this results in the death of millions of people from easily preventable diseases, and the reason is that vaccines do not arrive, because about half of them are wasted." .
Vaccines are transported on foot to remote areas, which are less than ideal transportation solutions, Liao says. “Basically, the vaccines are kept in a cooler box, similar to the box you might take on a picnic, and you use bags of ice cubes to cool them down, but they don't provide the temperature. Not suitable at all (vaccines should be kept at a temperature of 2-8°C), and direct contact between ice packs and vaccines causes them to freeze. Here, the potential for the vaccine to spoil becomes very high, and from this point I thought of finding a better solution, relying on my experience in electronic engineering and physics, and years of practical experience in refrigeration systems.”
As a result, the “Smile” system came to light, with funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Innovation Agency in the United Kingdom, and the Global Partnership and Innovation Program from “Expo 2020”, which supports innovative and creative solutions that achieve a real impact in human lives, and help communities around the world to A brighter future.
A prototype of the system is currently being displayed in the "Innovators for Good" pavilion of "Expo Live", along with the works and ideas of all "Expo Live" projects of global innovators from 76 countries.
Regarding the “Smile” system, Liao explained that “it is a hexagonal bag, with a wheel that resembles an internal belt, and the user can rotate it to select the vaccine storage room he wishes to manage, and the bag contains a self-closing door, which the user opens by himself to pick up the vaccine vials he needs, and we designed it In this way, to avoid the element of human error, because among the disadvantages of the traditional cold box is the possibility of leaving the box open, which may lead to the spoilage of the rest of the vaccines.
Instead of using ice cube bags, we used a large cylindrical version that goes into the circular design, to keep the vaccines at the correct temperature for up to six days.”
The system is elegant and simple, and can be carried in a backpack, making it ideal when navigating rivers or when traversing rough terrain, for example.
Liao and medical officials in Madagascar conducted field test experiments on the Smile system and it proved successful, but it still faces challenges in terms of finding the right investors and partners to help with financing, and presenting the idea to relevant organizations around the world that can use it, and the “Expo” is The right place to help her achieve this, as she put it. “I think (Expo 2020) contributes to increasing public awareness more, and we can encourage more people to support this type of project, and encourage innovation, as the people I interviewed seem Really interested, so the exhibition is a great platform.”
And Liao continued: “Bill Gates wanted to know how to load vaccines, and how to prevent them from freezing, and he also made an important point that this solution was likely to be more expensive than the current cold box unit, and this is true, but if we take into account the value of vaccines wasted, then we will see that we will save millions by preventing waste only.”
The highly significant comments from the world's fourth richest man can help Liao secure the funding and partners she needs to green-light full production.
But that didn't stop her from coming up with more ideas in the meantime: “We are constantly developing the current (Smile) system, and we are striving to move forward in research and development on an ongoing basis. For example, we have added an electronic feature, which displays temperature information, and also values How long ice packs can keep, which enables us to know how many villages can be reached, or if you need to change those packs, as well as equipping him with a tracking device.”
• "Smile" is displayed in the "Creators of Good" pavilion, along with the works of all "Expo Live" projects by global innovators from 76 countries.
Innovations from around the world
Expo Live hosts innovations and ideas from every corner of the world, many of which are now on display in the Creators for Good pavilion.
The program has received more than 11,000 applications from 184 countries and is currently supporting 140 beneficiaries from 76 countries, with Ideapatech's Smile system being just one of the examples.