Nimmi Ramanujam's healing touch is a cheap tool to spot cervical cancer

Nimmi Ramanujam's low-cost diagnostic device could transform women's health in poor countries, but the engineer says she drew on her musical skills for inspiration too.

Nimmi Ramanujam, professor of biomedical engineering and global health at Duke Global Health Institute, is an innovator, teacher and an entrepreneur. But much more than that bare-bones CV, she is a woman with a mission--to develop practical, effective and affordable technologies for women's health. That quest now brings the Indian-origin American into contact with India. She has designed a low-cost colposcope (an instrument used for screening cervical cancer) that has been recently tested at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

In India’s resource-starved health landscape, this is a big deal. Data shows that 80 to 85 per cent