Rice 360° is developing new methods of commercializing and distributing technologies through local networks that generate economic growth and innovation in poor regions. Rice 360° draws on the diverse experience of faculty from the Jones School of Management, the Baker Institute of Public Policy, and the Schools of Social Sciences, Humanities, Natural Sciences, and Engineering to determine how to make technologies available, meaningful, and useful to people around the world.
Commercializing Health Technologies in the Developing World Microfinance, or giving small loans to poor entrepreneurs to help them start and grow businesses, can create locally sustainable distribution systems for technologies and healthcare that can reduce poverty by promoting local economic growth. Jones School Professor Marc Epstein, an internationally recognized expert in microfinance and other commerce-based solutions to global poverty, will help Rice researchers and students deliver their life-changing innovations to people who need them around the world. Professor Epstein teaches a course in which MBA students develop business plans for global health technologies designed by Rice undergraduates in their senior design courses. This year, students in the course will travel to Rwanda to refine their business plans in partnership with business men and women there, with the goal of starting local businesses for the manufacture and distribution of health technologies. | | 
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Using Appropriate Technologies to Promote Local Businesses To treat babies with neonatal jaundice, Rice students designed a low-cost incubator, paired with phototherapy lights, based on the Blantyre Hot Cot, which has been used in a Malawi hospital for four years. The incubators and phototherapy lights are made with wood, light-bulbs, Plexiglass and LEDs. In July 2008, Rice students taught high school students in Lesotho to build the incubators. The high school students constructed incubators in the school's woodshop and delivered them to three hospitals in the area, where they became the first incubator in each setting. Experts estimate that millions of babies could be saved each year with proper incubation. | | 
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Implementing Integrated Community-Based Solutions Health and economic disparities persist amidst a confluence of factors, including poor environmental and economic conditions, limited infrastructure, and lack of access to health services and education. Sustainable gains in health and economic development require community-level solutions and policies that integrate these diverse factors. In a course taught by Amy Myers-Jaffe, the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, students learn about sustainable development, with a specific focus on the connection between energy, poverty, and health. As part of the course, students travel to Lesotho, where they assess community needs, and design and implement appropriate community-based interventions. This summer, they will implement ventilated, fuel-efficient stoves they have designed. | | 
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