Innovations in International Health

Innovations in International Health (IIH) was an innovation platform that facilitated multidisciplinary research to develop medical technologies for developing world settings at MIT. It was based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2008 through 2012. IIH's mission was to accelerate the development of appropriate and affordable health technologies by facilitating collaboration between researchers, users and health practitioners around the world.

IIH created a spin-off course that is still taught at MIT D-Lab called D-Lab Health, an interdisciplinary global health design and engineering course. Students learn about major global health challenges impacting the developing world and learn a set of design and prototyping tools to develop appropriate technologies to address these challenges. Students work closely with IIH partners CARE and CIES in Nicaragua to gain user feedback during the prototyping process. Projects from D-Lab Health include Ambuzap, BabyTracker, GlucoTank, Nebaul, and the POP bandage.

IIH was founded in the summer of 2007 by Amy Smith and Aamir Khan and was directed by José Gómez-Márquez. Its first meeting brought together 12 investigators from 6 countries. IIH boasted a growing portfolio of inventions and launched devices and research studies in the United States, Nicaragua, Honduras, Peru, Tanzania, India and Pakistan.

IIH aggregated physical facilities, called H-Labs, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the InterActive Research and Development headquarters in Karachi, Pakistan, and the Nicaraguan Center for Investigational Health Sciences in Managua.

IIH's community included scientists, health care workers, NGOs, international aid officials, public health researchers, businesspeople, and other partners from a wide range of disciplines. Their work spanned twelve R&D sites worldwide in fifteen technology projects across seven health fields.

IIH seeks to connect researchers around the world with several collaborative research tools, including a member-based social networking site, Collaboratorium (a graphical user interface that maps out fields of research and professional practice), Global Health Data Mining (statistical tools that identify areas of need in the realm of global health), and physical collaboration through conferences and meet-ups.

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