UCSF-University of Utah Global Health Collaboration Awarded WFSA Innovation Award

The World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists (WFSA) has awarded Maziar Nourian and Dr. Michael Lipnick the 2018 WFSA-Fresenius Kabi Anaesthesia Innovation Award to develop an affordable and context-appropriate capnography device to be used in low- and middle-income countries.   

There have been multiple calls to action for universal access to capnography in order to improve patient safety in resource-constrained countries, yet reliable and affordable capnography monitors for these settings are still not available. 

The prize is based on work by Maziar Nourian, a medical student at the University of Utah School of Medicine, and  Patrick Kolbay, an engineering PhD student at the University of Utah. Together they developed a RevoCap, a prototype capnography unit using sensor technology that is far less expensive than most existing devices.

Mazi recently finished 2 months at UCSF testing RevoCap and through this collaborative effort continues working with the UCSF Hypoxia Lab and the UCSF Anesthesia Division of Global Health Equity (globalanesthesia.ucsf.edu) to explore future directions not only for device development but also research to better understand the potential impact and cost-effectiveness of increasing access to capnography worldwide.