Washington Post: Ask a MacArthur genius: Just how cheap can cancer diagnosis get?
“What’s the best way to bring cutting-edge health care to the world’s poorest places? It can be tempting to export money and equipment to solve the problem. … Could there be a better way? [Bioengineer Rebecca] Richards-Kortum thinks so — and her efforts to bring affordable, adaptable technology to the world’s poorest places earned her a spot in this year’s class of MacArthur fellows. Richards-Kortum, who heads up Rice University’s Institute for Global Health, uses the latest advances in nanotechnology, fabrication, and molecular imaging to help invent equipment that’s rugged enough to stand up to the most challenging clinical conditions and cheap enough to make sense for communities that usually lack access to health care…” (Blakemore, 9/28).