When Dr Nguyen Phuoc Huy realized that his hospital in the poor rural area around the Mekong Delta in Vietnam would not be able to afford a new endoscope, he didn’t complain and sit helplessly. He took the matter into his own hands and after two years of work developed a homemade endoscope using only his PC and some cheap parts.
“The adaptor costs almost nothing because it is simply a system of lens linked to a webcam costing just about $30. In total I had to buy only the scope, which is about $800.”
“A Pentium 4 computer with a color printer is all that is needed for image processing. Using the Windows operating system, we have programs to record the images and put them in a database of patients.”
“I can now make a complete endoscope system in just one week,” says Dr Huy and adds that his biggest problem now is that people still do not know much about his product, which he also wants to make for other poor hospitals in Vietnam and in other countries.
Read more at BBC News…
