Pneumonia is a major killer of infants and children in lower income settings. Antibiotics are often the only treatment because oxygen therapy is simply out of reach for the majority of the population. With an extremely affordable oxygen therapy device, the Inspire team is looking to change this. (Inspire Medical) [http://inspiremedical.org], a team at Stanford University, has created a low-cost breathing assistant for the treatment of pneumonia and other forms of respiratory distress. The team has spun out its own organization called Inspire Medical . The usual treatment, Bubble CPAP, relies on pressurized oxygen and is expensive and dangerous to use in rural areas. Instead, Inspire changes the air pressure in a room using air filters and pumps, a safer and more easy to manage process that costs 1% of Bubble CPAP.

"Inspire’s pump draws in ambient air and filters, humidifies, and compresses it for the patient at an adjustable flow rate that is safe for an infant. Slightly bigger than a shoebox, it costs $200 instead of $20,000, can run off a car battery, and it does not require (but is fully compatible with) compressed oxygen," reports the Stanford Journal of Public Health. In this article the Inspire team describes the fact that reliance on a car battery is an important aspect of the device--field research showed that staff in Bangladesh were reluctant to plug a device into the wall for fear of all too frequent electrical burns.