The Glia project¶
Monday, April 13, 2020.
Please pray with me for the success of the Glia project. Health care providers require access to basic medical supplies and personal protective equipment. But today, many essential items are impossible to find. When they are available, they are prohibitively expensive for community and rural clinics, and across the global south.
The Glia project makes equal care possible through Open Access manufacturing and distribution of key medical supplies. Glia releases open plans for medical hardware, so that vital equipment may be produced cheaply by anyone with commonly available 3D printers. This allows high quality devices to be made available during periods of global supply chain disruption, and in areas with limited access. Glia has released face shields already being used in the battle against COVID-19, as well as other hardware including stethoscopes, tourniquets, and otoscopes. Additional devices including pulse oximeters, electrocardiograms, and dialysis products are currently in development.
For example the Glia stethoscope functions as well as the market gold-standard Littmann Cardiology III at less than 2% the cost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-KNTc0POLA
The medical director of the Glia project is Dr. Tarek Loubani. Today he has been awarded the 2020 Bassel Khartabil Fellowship, which honors the work and legacy of Bassel Khartabil, a Palestinian-Syrian technology innovator, artist and open source advocate who “disappeared” in 2012 then was executed by the Syrian regime in 2015. The fellowship provides funding, mentorship, and general support to individuals and teams whose work embodies the ideals of free culture and Open Access—ideals that Bassel dedicated his life to. The Bassel Khartabil Fellowship in turn is a project of Fabricatorz Foundation, with partnership and support provided by Creative Commons and Mozilla Foundation. The mission of Creative Commons is to make knowledge and creativity more easily and freely accessible to all, so that everyone in the world can benefit from it. “At a time when tech is becoming more closed and the world is facing an unprecedented pandemic, we need more people to channel the ethos of Bassel Khartabil: open, courageous, curious, and kind.” said J. Bob Alotta, Vice President of Global Programs at Mozilla Foundation.
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