Healthware Highlights: Field Ready

In the extensive history of finding on the ground solutions for complex problems in healthcare and humanitarian supplies, Field Ready stands out for its innovative approach and impact. Since 2012, they have focused on creating local solutions using sustainable manufacturing across the globe in ways that can thrive long after Field Ready has left the area.

For Field Ready, it's not about incremental change but transformation. Pushing to bring skills to the areas they are helping without worrying that this knowledge will disappear when their initial team leaves. Supporting local people, using local resources and local designs is instrumental in a fully localized process of manufacturing.

“We work in all sorts of different types of technologies and manufacturing processes and we do a lot of training and capacity building as well,” Executive Director Dr. Eric James said. “So, it's not geared towards one technology or one sector, as we call them, but is much broader than that. But that indeed means health, means additive manufacturing, it means many things.”

Dr. James, who recently handed over the reigns of leadership to Kat Sellers worked in different contexts all over the world in disaster and emergency relief settings for a couple decades before the organization came together.

“There’s just a profound love for doing [this work], for trying to help others, to try and have social impact,” James said. “But also a frustration with business as usual, frustration with supply chains, with working on projects that are supposed to be three months and the equipment showing up on the fourth month, things like that.”

As we’ve mentioned in these highlights before, there can often be trouble getting equipment where it needs to be.We frequently get caught in cycles of how things are ‘supposed’ to be done and the overly complicated processes we’ve developed worldwide when inevitably the most important thing is getting care to those who need it. Much like discussed in our Make Good Inc highlight, Field Ready is one of the organizations that ues 3D printing to get the job done, as well as other solutions depending on the problem.

“In Nepal there were two earthquakes, they set up an extra ward outside because the main hospital building wasn’t safe and so they put up tents and they had power going in but the piece wouldn’t fit,” James said. “Ordering the piece would take three months because it was made so far away so we 3D printed one and 12 hours later, it was fixed. An entire ward of a hospital is back in operation because they have power, not just headlamps.”

Early on, Field Ready found this niche with a project in Haiti in delivery rooms, many did not have access to an umbilical cord clamp. This is something that is necessary in the birthing process, and they were finding some solutions with old shoelaces, the fingers of surgical gloves, and other found objects. Field Ready helped develop a 3D printed umbilical cord clamp that could be produced locally with little work, allowing every child born access to this necessary piece of equipment.

“The doctors can only do so much, the healthcare providers and as soon as they don't have the materials they need, they're just talking. Frankly, they need tests, they need science, and then they need that one little plastic thing, right? So they cannot do their jobs without those things. It's that fundamental,” James said.

Open source has always been at the very core of their work, allowing access to these solutions has been imperative in their work.

“It's really important that designs, technical specifications, and the like are not behind paywalls. When they are life-saving, when they are going towards people who have really had the raw end of whatever situation that they've had to go through, to then say, we're going to make a profit off of that is kind of rough. And so we believe that open source can help improve people's lives,” James said.

By prioritizing open source in their work they have been able to create the needed replacements for devices on the ground and put them into use immediately. Primarily because of safety concerns, these are just a fraction of the things that Field Ready releases as Open Healthware.

“In clinics all over the world, there'd be a big piece of equipment that was donated years ago and one little part breaks on it and now it's just sitting collecting dust,” James said. “So that's everything from EKG machines to dental chairs to baby incubators, all sorts of stuff. And if we can fix that one piece, you just put a $10,000 piece of equipment back into use.”

They are also careful to be clear on what their parts can accomplish. The catalogue of 133 parts they’ve already developed has readiness levels, as well as a risk level assignment for each piece. There are always going to be questions of risk when it comes to devices involved with health, Field Ready is extremely aware of the complications around development.

“Is that plastic piece that was originally a metal piece as durable? Well, probably not. That metal piece was meant to last six years, and that was seven years ago. So that plastic piece may last three years.” James said. “But we do a good number of things in health, we work a lot on water and sanitation, child protection, search and rescue, all sorts of things.”

More than a decade since their inception, Field Ready is actively working in Syria, the South Pacific, Türkiye, the Philippines, and has spent time in the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Iraq, the USA, Colombia and more. They have developed an incredible catalogue of projects from Better Buckets, to an Accessibility Retrofitting Kit, not to mention extensive documentation on all their projects. We are certainly pleased to know that Field Ready will always be an example of excellence in the Open Healthware community.