Medical device wiki aids poor and under-served communities

More than 100 medical devices designed to aid poor populations are catalogued online thanks to researchers at the University of Michigan. Dubbed the Global Health Medical Device Compendium, the wiki profiles devices and links to related studies. Database users can search for tools based on diseases, geographic regions and device status. "Let's say you're setting up a healthcare facility in the developing world and you know you're only going to be able to rely on a limited amount of electricity and there could be 10 mothers delivering at once. You could go to this database to see what your options are for fetal heart rate monitors or infant warming devices," Sofia Merajver, M.D., director of the U-M Center for Global Heath, said in an announcement. Announcement