These progressive designs are tackling taboo health points for ladies

Written by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN
A non-hormonal contraception capsule that ladies can insert simply earlier than intercourse. A rape equipment that offers victims extra company and streamlines the proof assortment course of. An overhauled design for a 150-year-old software utilized in postpartum vaginal tearing.
These designs are simply among the finalists introduced this week within the 2021 Index Award, and their creators hope to make the way forward for drugs and sexual health extra equitable for all genders.
“There continues to be a lot disgrace round feminine, trans and non-binary our bodies that impose dangerous limitations to healthcare,” mentioned Liza Chong, CEO of the award’s Danish nonprofit group, The Index Project. “A tradition of silence persists round quite a lot of essential matters, starting from ladies’s sexual pleasure to the long-term implications of childbirth, serving to sideline important conversations and deny folks entry to useful and even life-saving sources.”
Telemedicine firm Sehat Kahani makes use of an all-female community of medical doctors to bolster healthcare accessibility in Pakistan and strengthen alternatives for feminine medical professionals. Credit: Sehat Kahani
Hosted since 2005, the biennial awards focuses extra broadly on how design can clear up essential world points — previous winners embrace the language app Duolingo and the 3D-printed Mars habitat MARSHA — however with one class targeted solely on design for the physique, finalists and winners typically deal with gendered points in drugs which have lengthy been ignored or are thought-about taboo.
Two years in the past, as an illustration, the finalists included the AI-powered chatbot Raaji, which solutions questions on menstruation, psychological health and intercourse for women and younger ladies in growing nations. This 12 months, two ladies medical doctors, Dr. Sara Saeed Khurram and Dr. Iffat Zafar Aga, have been acknowledged for his or her Pakistani telemedicine firm Sehat Kahani, which makes use of an all-female community of medical doctors. According to the Index Award, the e-clinics present accessible healthcare and try to fight the so-called “physician bride” phenomenon, the place many feminine medical college students within the nation forgo their careers, beneath strain to prioritize motherhood.
This 12 months’s finalists hope to make seismic adjustments on the earth by means of a single thoughtfully designed product that, in some circumstances, replace a long-neglected space of drugs. Take the Hegenberger Speculum, as an illustration, which claims to make it simpler for midwives to sew perineum tears that happen throughout start — one thing 9 out of 10 ladies expertise, based on the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) — and is made out of silicone as an alternative of steel for extra consolation for the affected person. The present speculum had not been up to date in a century and a half, based on its creator, Malene Hegenberger.
“It’s fairly a taboo topic,” Hegenberger told the Danish media outlet Avisen in 2018. “Women usually do not wish to be a hassle and there is numerous different stuff to deal with after childbirth. They put themselves apart and put the kid first. I feel that is why there hasn’t been a lot achieved about it.”
This silicone speculum stays expanded while inserted so midwives can use both hands to stitch postpartum tearing, allowing them to perform the proceduce without an assistant and simplifying the process.
This silicone speculum stays expanded whereas inserted so midwives can use each fingers to sew postpartum tearing, permitting them to carry out the proceduce with out an assistant and simplifying the method. Credit: Malene Hegenberger/MadeByMakers
Meanwhile, the corporate Cirqle Biomedical is to start with phases of testing a brand new type of contraception that, if profitable, may revolutionize the sector since hormonal contraception was launched to the market in 1960.
“Women’s health has been under-prioritized and uncared for for many years,” mentioned CEO Frederik Petursson Madsen over e mail. “Despite having billions of customers, there was little or no innovation within the business.”
Its product, Oui, is a gel capsule that ladies can insert a minute earlier than sexual activity and lasts for as much as 5 hours, based on the corporate. It’s non-hormonal, fabricated from water and chitosan biopolymers, and works by thickening cervical mucus, stopping sperm from migrating previous the vaginal canal.
Though Oui has only been tested on animals so far, its creators hope it will provide women with flexible, non-hormonal contraception.
Though Oui has solely been examined on animals thus far, its creators hope it can present ladies with versatile, non-hormonal contraception. Credit: Cirqle Biomedical
Oui is supposed to be much less invasive than implants like Nexplanon and IUDs, which require in-office procedures to insert and take away; present extra flexibility than a each day regimented capsule; and lower down on uncomfortable side effects which are frequent with hormonal contraception, from associations with depression to a better threat of blood clots and stroke.
“The necessity for ladies who take contraception is to forestall being pregnant, and since this want was the precedence and there was a scarcity of excellent options, ladies (have) needed to settle for and put up with the uncomfortable side effects,” mentioned design supervisor Marie Lyhne in an e mail interview.

Addressing systemic points

Designer Antya Waegemann has taken on a deeply complicated drawback that reaches throughout healthcare, policing and authorized methods in nations all over the world together with the US: the backlog of lots of of hundreds of untested rape kits — DNA assortment kits that are essential to figuring out and charging sexual assault perpetrators.
While sexual assault impacts folks of all genders, the UN estimates that just about one in three ladies over the age of 15 globally have skilled sexual violence, and the statistics for transgender persons are even starker at one in two, based on the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC).
In the US, the method for testing rape kits is plagued with points from finish to finish, from laboratory delays to police destroying them. The issues begin proper from the start, based on Waegemann, who spent a 12 months as a sexual assault advocate at New York Presbyterian Hospital, with complicated package deal design and collections that may take hours for victims who’ve simply been by means of a extreme trauma.
“It grew to become so clear to me by means of that course of, and in addition studying the directions myself, how really tough it was to finish this equipment,” she mentioned in a video name.
The Margo Kit is a redesigned kit to collect DNA after a sexual assault.
The Margo Kit is a redesigned equipment to gather DNA after a sexual assault. Credit: Margo Kit
Though Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) are educated to gather the rape kits, there’s a national shortage of some of these nurses, and plenty of hospitals will flip away victims if they do not have the workers — or the kits — out there. According to Waegemann, she hardly ever noticed a SANE skilled on workers whereas volunteering; as an alternative, it was largely ER medical doctors and nurses dealing with the method. They are usually a lot much less accustomed to the equipment, Waegemann mentioned, which was first designed within the Seventies and may embrace as much as 16 completely different envelopes for gathering genital swabs, pubic hair combings and fingernail clippings, amongst different issues.
Waegemann’s redesigned equipment affords shade coding and clear directions for healthcare suppliers, in addition to an app for the victims to comply with together with the method and perceive every step.
The accompanying app helps victims stay informed with a step-by-step explanation.
The accompanying app helps victims keep knowledgeable with a step-by-step clarification. Credit: Margo Kit
But Waegemann additionally desires to make processing and testing the kits simpler and quicker for police and lab technicians, in addition to present quick assist for victims. Her firm, Margo, is engaged on different merchandise as effectively that intention to reimagine the system totally, from how kits are examined and, importantly, tracked, as soon as they depart the hospital, to an app that offers folks data on how and the place to get examined if they have been assaulted.
“The designs I’ve created after all take into account the whole system,” Waegemann mentioned in a follow-up e mail. “But they’re actually about taking a whole course of that’s designed to exclude victims from taking management and looking for justice, and re-designing the aftermath…”.
“I actually imagine {that a} product itself can change a system in a method that typically coverage can not,” she mentioned within the name.
On September 30, 5 winners shall be introduced from the 46 whole finalists. The Index Award lists over €200,000 ($244,000) in prizes for the winners, in addition to the potential for the group to assist fund their work shifting ahead.
Top picture: A Oui capsule by Cirqle Biomedical
See all the finalists for the 2021 Index Award here.

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