iShow India 2019 Awards Silk, Stoves and Stethoscopes

A stove for the Himalayas, a solar-powered silk reeler and an upgraded stethoscope won iShow India 2019, sponsored by The Lemelson Foundation, in Bengaluru, India.

Designers of three new essential technologies won India’s round of the ASME Innovation showcase (iShow) in Bengaluru, India. The winners are the Eco1 Rocket Stove by Himalayan Rocket Stove, TAAL Digital Stethoscope by MUSE Diagnostics and Unnati Solar Silk by Resham Sutra. The winners will share a pool of $30,000 to help develop their prototypes and each will receive design and engineering consultation services and invitations to a closing event in New York this fall.

The event on April 4th is the first of three rounds of global competition for startups developing a device that solves a problem in emerging economies and underserved communities. Rounds two and three will take place in Kenya and the USA in the coming months.

At iShow India, eight finalists presented their prototypes in development before a panel of judges who are experts in technology for global development. The Judges includes heads of Villgro, Henkel Adhesives Technologies India, Ankur Capital, Tecnova, Osteo3d, and Myelin Foundry. Each design team’s pitch revealed engineering attributes and outlined plans for manufacturing, implementation, marketing, and financing. See all eight prototypes at thisishardware.org. And these are iShow India’s three finalists, plus the fan favorite that won an online voting competition.

Eco1 Rocket Stove

By Himalayan Rocket Stove

The Himalayan Rocket Stove team built four upgrades into the traditional rocket stove design to create the Eco1.

“Improvements are in primary preheated airflow, secondary preheated airflow, vortexing of combustion gases in the secondary combustion chamber and heat trapping, which improves thermal efficiency dramatically,” says co-designer Russell Collins.

The Eco1 burns hot at 800-1000C, mixing and burning combustion gases to economize the use of wood and reduce emissions. The result is a lighter environmental footprint that could slow deforestation in the Himalayas. For more, please see himalayanrocketstove.com.

See more rocket stove designs in E4C’s Solutions Library

TAAL Digital Stethoscope

By MUSE Diagnostics

MUSE Diagnostics is attempting to update the digital stethoscope while offering it at a price comparable to that of the traditional in-the-ear analog version. The team’s TAAL stethoscope records audio and integrates with a mobile application to share the recording, visualize and analyze the data it collects. MUSE can push software updates to improve performance and battery life, and its cloud-based tools can offer diagnostic suggestions.

Besides the medical center, the device could also have a place in the classroom. Digital recordings are easy to share and discuss with students, making the device an affordable improvement on analog stethoscopes.

For more, please see museinc.in.

For more mHealth devices please see E4C’s Solutions Library

Unnati Solar Silk

By Resham Sutra

Two would-be vendors of silk products ran into supply problems with Tassar silk yarn that comes from silk cocoons that grow in forests of East India. Remarkably, the entire silk extraction process is artisanal, handled almost exclusively by women in the region who do the work by hand. Recognizing an opportunity, the Resham Sutra team created a low-powered automatic silk reeler that runs on solar power. It is the only thing in its class and has no competition, the design team says.

Manually, silk reelers can process 70 grams of yarn in a day, which is not enough to support a family. Each machine, on the other hand, can process 200 grams in a day. To date, 7000 silk reeling machines operate in rural East India. The video below shows an array of reelers with their operators sitting beside them.

The design team does not yet have web site, but they are on Twitter at @ReshamSutra.

B-Hue

By Tallshortree

In addition to the three grand prize winners, a fan favorite elected through an online voting process won a prize of (USD) $1000. Tallshortree won that contest with B-Hue, India’s first low-cost, non-invasive hemoglobin tester to help detect cases of anemia. Anemia is a severe issue in the country, afflicting half of India’s children and one in every five men.

For information please see tallshortree.com.

For more information about this year’s ISHOW participants and winners, please visit ThisIsHardware.org. And follow the events on Twitter at @ASMEISHOW, and hashtags #ISHOW19 and #ThisIsHardware. The Lemelson Foundation Entrepreneurship Resources can be found here: https://www.lemelson.org/resources/