Lab-in-a-Backpack

Lab-in-a-Backpack is a battery-powered tool kit doctors can literally strap on and carry in to otherwise inaccessible villages, where they help provide much-needed testing and treatment. Eight of the packs have been designed and built over the past two years by 12 students involved in Rice’s Beyond Traditional Borders global health initiative.

The packs use off-the-shelf and custom-designed technologies, including a microscope, an otoscope, a pulse oximeter, a power control unit, a solar panel, basic medical supplies and much more. The prototype was tested in remote locations over the summer, and seven backpacks remain in the field in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Botswana, Lesotho and Malawi.