20,000,000 babies are born prematurely every year and 4 million die. That's 450 every hour. 1 every 8 seconds. So begins the pitch from a relatively new nonprofit called Embrace. Their focus is creating affordable technologies for low income communities in the developing world that improve health and save lives. Their mission in their words:

Designed by students in a Stanford class called Entreprenurial Design for Extreme Affordability, the infant warmer you see above costs less than 1% of traditional incubators. And it works where there's no electricity. Here's how it works:

Simplicity is a key factor in successfully designing technology-centric products for poor communities. Which begs the questions: Doesn't simplicity also sell in the U.S. and other "developed" countries? So is there a market for this infant warmer in our hospitals for less sick babies, or for home use which would allow families to transition from hospital to home sooner? Same story for GE's handheld electrocardiogram device (designed for emerging markets) that I blogged about in a prior post. 

From the work we've been doing over the years with medical device companies and their customers, the answer is a resounding YES.

And BTW, Embrace has many partners, but none from the med device industry. I smell opportunity!