Miranda Dixon – innovation project for resilient oxygen concentrators

Miranda Dixon, Collectives Leads from Brink, gave a presentation at the 2024 Systems Innovation Conference on an innovation project that delivered improved oxygen concentrators to low and middle income countries.

https://www.unicef.org/innovation/resilient-oxygen-concentrators

Over 700,000 children have died from their need for oxygen support.

Countries that did have oxygen concentrators, devices that remove nitrogen from ambient air and feed out higher concentration levels of oxygen, would see them end up in the back of maintenance cupboards when they stopped working. The devices were generally donations. Maintenance was not thought of nor was there an appetite to buy.

The medical devices were design for use in modern, cleaner air environments. They were not designed for use in hot, dusty, rural places around the world such as Africa.

The manufacturers were incentivised by Unicef committing to buying a large number of units and that R&D was co-funded too.

One interesting point that came out for me was that of emergent learning. If you don’t have some flexibility in the contract and being too prescriptive on what will be paid for, then it could cut off new paths, or better innovations.

This is the emergent learning. Things you learn by doing, that weren’t planned.