SV3DPrinter

3D printers in or near rural health facilities

Posted on July 30, 2019 Updated on September 2, 2019

According to HESE director John Gershenson, “For too long, people have lacked access to appropriate medical care just because of where they were born. Now, the entire world will know that Penn Staters are helping to right that wrong. We’ve been exploring the idea of installing these 3D printers in or near rural health facilities, training staff members and local entrepreneurs there how to use them and creating the necessary support systems. If these facilities can make those hard-to-get items for themselves, they could keep running their facility the way they need to rather than having to import everything from other countries.”

For rural areas in Kenya, healthcare accessibility has been and continues to be, a growing concern—one that the Kijenzi venture hopes to solve by providing accessible and affordable medical education tools.

According to Ben Savonen, “this is a very experimental project, but, as some of the components of its work out, it will have a huge impact.”

https://wp.me/p64ptu-2tg

Kijenzi is one of many ventures in the Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship program that approaches real-world issues with Penn State know-how.