This year’s James Dyson award winner is MOM

The James Dyson Award is an award given mainly to young students who try to design products that are not only out of the ordinary, but are practical and could help impact the whole world. The James Dyson Foundation is a charitable trust that organizes the competition for product designers, industrial designers and engineers. While the organization doesn’t have a huge reach yet, it is present in most of the first world countries. Last year’s winner brought us the Titan Arm, the bionic arm.

This year’s Dyson Award goes to MOM actually, which was designed by James Roberts, a 23 year old graduate of Loughborough University in the U.K. MOM is actually an inflatable incubator and with it, James managed to encompass most things the James Dyson Foundation stands for – helping out in ecological and economical ways. MOM is a portable incubator that is aimed at third-world countries and developing nations in which the problem of pre-natal care and newborn care is becoming worrisome. Recent surveys show that more than half of the infant deaths in developing countries are caused by improper hospital equipment and pre-natal care.

With MOM, which was one of the most remarkable elements shown off at the James Dyson awards, hospitals as well as individuals can make use of an incubator that is cheap and functional. According to James Roberts, you can build MOM with $400, which is well below the average price of incubators nowadays, which can go as high as $47.000. MOM works pretty easy and it actually has an accordion mechanism which helps it become portable. It has a built-in battery that can last for up to 24 hours, which is a great idea for when it is used in locations where electricity is sketchy. Ceramic elements are used in order to heat the device and also has a phototherapy unit built-in for jaundice treatments. You can customize temperature and humidity and the device will alert you in case these change for some reason.

The James Dyson Award went out to MOM with the hope of improving the future and helping developing countries, as well as countries at war to save as many children as possible. James Roberts was inspired by refugee camps when he though out the design and James Dyson said that the contraption is a great example of how diligent work and innovative minds can create something that would influence the future and help those in need. He also stressed the fact that western culture takes many things for granted, and the MOM changes that perspective in a way.