A lab the size of a postage stamp | George Whitesides | TEDxBoston
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0:11 - 0:14Host: TED is always about
lifting humanity, -
0:14 - 0:17and our next speaker is George Whitesides.
-
0:17 - 0:20He's listed as the professor
of chemistry at Harvard, -
0:20 - 0:23but any of you who have read
his biography know, he's so much more. -
0:23 - 0:26You can start with the fact
that he founded 12 companies, -
0:26 - 0:30that he has co-authored
950 scientific articles, -
0:30 - 0:32or the fact that he is listed
on 50 patents. -
0:32 - 0:35But I think
what he is going to talk about today -
0:35 - 0:37is similar to what Hugo talked about,
-
0:37 - 0:40another way that the application
of technology to today's problems -
0:40 - 0:42gives us all hope and optimism.
-
0:42 - 0:44I'd like to introduce George Whitesides.
-
0:44 - 0:47(Applause)
-
0:54 - 0:57George Whitesides: I am a wonk.
-
0:58 - 1:02Started my career at MIT,
I was quite at home there. -
1:03 - 1:07And we are defined
by a certain view of the world. -
1:07 - 1:09And I will illustrate this in a way
-
1:09 - 1:11that's relevant
to what I want to talk about. -
1:11 - 1:15A few years ago I spent my evening
cleanin out my attic, -
1:17 - 1:19and lifted some heavy stuff.
-
1:19 - 1:23In the middle of the night
I woke up in agonized pain. -
1:23 - 1:26And I thought,
well I've probably strained my back, -
1:26 - 1:28but I wanted to be a responsible adult,
-
1:28 - 1:30so I went off to the local emergency room,
-
1:31 - 1:33and I learned something very interesting,
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1:33 - 1:35which is that as a middle aged male,
-
1:35 - 1:37if you walk into the emergency room
-
1:37 - 1:39and say, "I think
I might be having a heart attack," -
1:39 - 1:42all the people behind the desk
actually stand up and do something. -
1:42 - 1:44It's really impressive.
-
1:44 - 1:46(Laughter)
-
1:46 - 1:50So, very sharp needles
were stuck into veins, -
1:50 - 1:52and electrodes were applied
-
1:52 - 1:55and very fancy equipment
did fantastic stuff -
1:56 - 1:58and - turns out I didn't.
-
1:58 - 2:00But I have to say, I loved the experience,
-
2:00 - 2:02because I'm a wonk, that's what I do.
-
2:02 - 2:04And it was very sophisticated,
-
2:05 - 2:07it would have been even more sophisticated
-
2:08 - 2:10had I actually had a heart attack,
-
2:10 - 2:12but it was also very, very expensive.
-
2:13 - 2:17And imagine that you do
the same thing in this environment, -
2:17 - 2:20and the story is much more complicated.
-
2:20 - 2:23There, the problem is basically solved
by either you die or you don't. -
2:25 - 2:28The problem that I want
to talk with you about -
2:28 - 2:30is really the problem of:
-
2:30 - 2:34How does one supply healthcare
-
2:34 - 2:37in a world in which cost is everything?
-
2:38 - 2:39How do you do that?
-
2:40 - 2:42And the basic paradigm
we want to suggest to you, -
2:42 - 2:43I want to suggest to you,
-
2:44 - 2:46is one in which you say that in order to
-
2:46 - 2:49treat disease you have to first
know what you're treating - -
2:49 - 2:52that's diagnostics - and then
you have to do something. -
2:52 - 2:55So, the program that we're involved
in is something which we call -
2:55 - 2:58Diagnostics for All,
or zero-cost diagnostics. -
2:58 - 3:02How do you provide medically
relevant information -
3:02 - 3:05at as close as possible to zero cost?
How do you do it? -
3:07 - 3:10There are a number of reasons
-
3:12 - 3:14for doing this kind of thing,
other than this, -
3:14 - 3:16and I want to return to one of these
at the end. -
3:16 - 3:18Let me just give you two examples.
-
3:18 - 3:21The rigors of military medicine
-
3:21 - 3:24are not so dissimilar
from the third world - -
3:24 - 3:26poor resources, a rigorous environment,
-
3:27 - 3:30a series of problems in lightweight,
and things of this kind - -
3:30 - 3:33and also not so different
from the home healthcare -
3:33 - 3:36and diagnostic system world.
-
3:36 - 3:39So, the technology
that I want to talk about -
3:39 - 3:42is for the third world,
for the developing world, -
3:42 - 3:45but it has, I think,
much broader application, -
3:45 - 3:48because information is so important
in the healthcare system. -
3:49 - 3:52So what would have been the equivalent
-
3:52 - 3:57of the laboratory that did the diagnosis
in the Newton hospital? -
3:57 - 3:59And, you see two examples here.
-
3:59 - 4:04One is a lab that is actually a fairly
high-end laboratory in Africa. -
4:04 - 4:07The second is basically an entrepreneur
-
4:07 - 4:11who is set up and doing who-knows-what
in a table in a market. -
4:11 - 4:14I don't know what kind
of healthcare is delivered there. -
4:14 - 4:18But it's not really
what is probably most efficient. -
4:19 - 4:21What is our approach?
-
4:22 - 4:26And the way
in which one typically approaches -
4:26 - 4:27a problem of lowering cost,
-
4:27 - 4:30starting from the perspective
of the United States, -
4:30 - 4:32is to take our solution,
-
4:32 - 4:35and then to try to cut cost out of it.
-
4:35 - 4:37No matter how you do that,
-
4:37 - 4:40you're not going to start
with a 100,000-dollar instrument -
4:40 - 4:42and bring it down to no-cost.
It isn't going to work. -
4:42 - 4:45So, the approach that we took
was the other way around. -
4:45 - 4:47To ask, "What is the cheapest
possible stuff -
4:47 - 4:50that you could make
a diagnostic system out of, -
4:50 - 4:53and get useful information, add function?"
-
4:53 - 4:55And what we've chosen is paper.
-
4:55 - 4:58What you see here is a prototypic device.
-
4:58 - 5:00It's about a centimeter on the side.
-
5:00 - 5:03It's about the size of a fingernail,
I'll show you a picture in a moment. -
5:03 - 5:07The lines around the edges are a polymer.
-
5:08 - 5:09It's made of paper
-
5:10 - 5:12and paper, of course, wicks fluid,
-
5:12 - 5:16as you know, paper, cloth -
drop wine on the tablecloth, -
5:16 - 5:19and the wine wicks all over everything.
-
5:19 - 5:21Put it on your shirt, it ruins the shirt.
-
5:21 - 5:23That's what a hydrophilic surface does.
-
5:24 - 5:27So, in this device
the idea is that you drip -
5:27 - 5:29the bottom end of it in a drop of,
-
5:29 - 5:30in this case, urine.
-
5:30 - 5:34The fluid wicks its way
into those chambers at the top. -
5:34 - 5:38The brown color indicates
the amount of glucose in the urine, -
5:38 - 5:42the blue color indicates the amount
of protein in the urine. -
5:42 - 5:44And the combination of those two
-
5:44 - 5:45is a first order shot at a number
-
5:45 - 5:48of useful things that you want.
-
5:48 - 5:52So, this is an example of a device
made from a simple piece of paper. -
5:52 - 5:54Now, how simple can you
make the production? -
5:54 - 5:56Why do we choose paper?
-
5:57 - 6:00There's an example of the same
thing on a finger, -
6:01 - 6:03showing you basically what it looks like.
-
6:03 - 6:06One reason for using paper
is that it's everywhere. -
6:06 - 6:08We have made these kinds of devices
-
6:08 - 6:11using napkins and toilet paper
-
6:11 - 6:13and wraps, and all kinds of stuff.
-
6:13 - 6:15So, the production capability is there.
-
6:16 - 6:18The second is, you can put lots and lots
-
6:18 - 6:20of tests in a very small place.
-
6:20 - 6:23I'll show you in a moment
that the stack of paper there -
6:23 - 6:24would probably hold something like
-
6:24 - 6:27100,000 tests, something of that kind.
-
6:27 - 6:30And then finally, a point
that you don't think of so much -
6:30 - 6:32in developed world medicine:
-
6:33 - 6:34it eliminates sharps.
-
6:34 - 6:38And what sharps means
is needles, things that stick. -
6:38 - 6:40If you've taken a sample
of someone's blood -
6:40 - 6:43and the someone might have hepatitis C,
-
6:43 - 6:45you don't want to make
a mistake and stick it in you. -
6:45 - 6:47You don't want to do that.
-
6:47 - 6:50So, how do you dispose of that?
It's a problem everywhere. -
6:50 - 6:51And here you simply burn it.
-
6:51 - 6:53So, it's a sort of a practical approach
-
6:53 - 6:55to starting on things.
-
6:56 - 6:59Now, you say, "If paper is a good idea,
-
7:00 - 7:01other people have surely thought of it."
-
7:02 - 7:03And the answer is, of course, yes.
-
7:03 - 7:05Those half of you, roughly,
-
7:05 - 7:07who are women,
-
7:07 - 7:10at some point may have
had a pregnancy test. -
7:10 - 7:11Probably had several.
-
7:11 - 7:14And the most common of these
-
7:14 - 7:17is in a device that looks
like the thing on the left. -
7:17 - 7:19It's something called
a lateral flow immunoassay. -
7:19 - 7:21In that particular test,
-
7:21 - 7:23urine either, containing
-
7:23 - 7:26a hormone called HCG, does or does not
-
7:26 - 7:28flow across a piece of paper.
-
7:28 - 7:32And there are two bars.
One indicates that the test is working, -
7:32 - 7:35and if the second bar shows up,
you're pregnant. -
7:35 - 7:38This is a terrific kind of test
in a binary world, -
7:39 - 7:40and the nice thing about pregnancy
-
7:40 - 7:43is either you are pregnant
or you're not pregnant. -
7:43 - 7:46You're not partially pregnant
or thinking about being pregnant -
7:46 - 7:47or something of that sort.
-
7:47 - 7:48So, it works very well there,
-
7:48 - 7:52but it doesn't work very well when you
need more quantitative information. -
7:52 - 7:53There are also dipsticks,
-
7:53 - 7:55but if you look at the dipsticks,
-
7:55 - 7:57they're for another kind
of urine analysis. -
7:57 - 8:00There are an awful lot of colors
and things like that. -
8:00 - 8:03What do you actually do
about that in a difficult circumstance? -
8:04 - 8:07So, the approach that we started
with is to ask: -
8:09 - 8:12Is it really practical
to make things of this sort? -
8:12 - 8:16And that problem is now,
in a purely engineering way, solved. -
8:17 - 8:20And the procedure that we have
is simply to start with paper. -
8:20 - 8:23You run it through a new kind
of printer called a wax printer. -
8:24 - 8:27The wax printer does
what looks like printing. -
8:27 - 8:30It is printing. You put that on,
you warm it a little bit, -
8:30 - 8:33the wax prints through
so it absorbs into the paper, -
8:33 - 8:35and you end up with the device
that you want. -
8:35 - 8:37The printers cost 800 bucks now.
-
8:38 - 8:42We estimate that if you
were to run them 24 hours a day -
8:42 - 8:44they'd make about 10 million tests a year.
-
8:44 - 8:47So, it's a solved problem,
that particular problem is solved. -
8:47 - 8:50And there is an example of the kind
of thing that you see. -
8:50 - 8:52That's on a piece of 8 by 12 paper.
-
8:52 - 8:54That takes about two seconds to make.
-
8:55 - 8:57And so I regard that as done.
-
8:57 - 8:59There is a very important issue here,
-
8:59 - 9:01which is that because it's a printer,
-
9:01 - 9:03a color printer, it prints colors.
-
9:03 - 9:04That's what color printers do.
-
9:05 - 9:08I'll show you in a moment,
that's actually quite useful. -
9:09 - 9:11Now, the next question
that you would like to ask -
9:11 - 9:13is, what would you like to measure?
-
9:13 - 9:14What would you like to analyze?
-
9:14 - 9:18And the thing
which you'd most like to analyze, -
9:18 - 9:19we're a fair distance from.
-
9:19 - 9:23It's what's called
"fever of undiagnosed origin." -
9:23 - 9:25Someone comes into the clinic,
-
9:25 - 9:27they have a fever, they feel bad.
-
9:27 - 9:28What do they have?
-
9:28 - 9:30Do they have T.B.?
Do they have AIDS? -
9:30 - 9:31Do they have a common cold?
-
9:31 - 9:33The triage problem.
-
9:33 - 9:36That's a hard problem
for reasons that I won't go through. -
9:36 - 9:39There are an awful lot of things
that you'd like to distinguish among. -
9:39 - 9:41But then there are a series of things:
-
9:41 - 9:44AIDS, hepatitis, malaria, TB, others
-
9:45 - 9:48and simpler ones,
such as guidance of treatment. -
9:48 - 9:52Now even that's
more complicated than you think. -
9:53 - 9:57A friend of mine works
in transcultural psychiatry, -
9:57 - 9:59and he is interested in the question
-
9:59 - 10:02of why people do
and don't take their meds. -
10:02 - 10:04So, Dapsone, or something like that,
-
10:04 - 10:06you have to take it for a while.
-
10:06 - 10:09He has a wonderful story
of talking to a villager in India -
10:09 - 10:12and saying, "Have you taken
your Dapsone?" "Yes." -
10:12 - 10:14"Have you taken it every day?" "Yes."
-
10:14 - 10:16"Have you taken if for a month?" "Yes."
-
10:16 - 10:18What the guy actually meant
-
10:18 - 10:21was that he'd fed a 30-day dose of Dapsone
-
10:21 - 10:23to his dog, that morning.
-
10:23 - 10:24(Laughter)
-
10:24 - 10:25He was telling the truth.
-
10:25 - 10:27Because in a different culture,
-
10:27 - 10:29the dog is a surrogate for you,
-
10:29 - 10:33you know, "today," "this month,"
"since the rainy season" - -
10:33 - 10:36there are lots of opportunities
for misunderstanding, -
10:36 - 10:38and so an issue here is to,
-
10:38 - 10:39in some cases, to figure out
-
10:40 - 10:43how to deal with matters
that seem uninteresting, -
10:43 - 10:44like compliance.
-
10:45 - 10:49Now, take a look at what a typical
test looks like. -
10:49 - 10:52Prick a finger, you get some blood,
-
10:52 - 10:53about 50 microliters.
-
10:53 - 10:55That's about all you're going to get,
-
10:55 - 10:59because you can't use
the usual sort of systems. -
11:00 - 11:02You can't manipulate it very well,
-
11:02 - 11:04although I'll show something
about that in a moment. -
11:04 - 11:07So, you take the drop of blood,
no further manipulations, -
11:07 - 11:08you put it on a little device,
-
11:08 - 11:12the device filters out the blood cells,
lets the serum go through, -
11:12 - 11:14and you get a series of colors
-
11:14 - 11:16down in the bottom there.
-
11:16 - 11:20And the colors indicate
"disease" or "normal." -
11:21 - 11:22But even that's complicated,
-
11:22 - 11:26because to you, to me,
colors might indicate "normal," -
11:26 - 11:29but, after all, we're all suffering from
-
11:29 - 11:31probably an excess of education.
-
11:31 - 11:33What you do about something which requires
-
11:33 - 11:35quantitative analysis?
-
11:36 - 11:38And so the solution
that we and many other people -
11:38 - 11:40are thinking about there,
-
11:40 - 11:42and at this point
there is a dramatic flourish, -
11:42 - 11:46and out comes the universal solution
to everything these days, -
11:46 - 11:47which is a cell phone.
-
11:47 - 11:49In this particular case, a camera phone.
-
11:49 - 11:53They're everywhere,
six billion a month in India. -
11:53 - 11:56And the idea is that what one does,
-
11:56 - 11:59is to take the device,
-
11:59 - 12:01you dip it, you develop the color,
-
12:01 - 12:04you take a picture, the picture
goes to a central laboratory. -
12:04 - 12:06You don't have to send out a doctor,
-
12:06 - 12:09you send out somebody who can
just take the sample, -
12:09 - 12:12and in the clinic either a doctor,
or ideally a computer -
12:12 - 12:14in this case, does the analysis.
-
12:14 - 12:16Turns out to work actually quite well,
-
12:16 - 12:19particularly when your color printer
has printed the color bars -
12:19 - 12:21that indicate how things work.
-
12:21 - 12:24So, my view of the health care worker
of the future -
12:24 - 12:25is not a doctor,
-
12:25 - 12:29but is an 18-year-old,
otherwise unemployed, who has two things: -
12:29 - 12:31He has a backpack full of these tests,
-
12:31 - 12:33and a lancet to occasionally
take a blood sample, -
12:33 - 12:35and an AK-47.
-
12:35 - 12:38And these are the things
that get him through his day. -
12:40 - 12:42There's another
very interesting connection here, -
12:42 - 12:45and that is that what one wants to do
-
12:45 - 12:48is to pass through useful information
-
12:48 - 12:51over what is generally
a pretty awful telephone system. -
12:52 - 12:54It turns out there's an enormous
amount of information -
12:54 - 12:58already available on that subject,
which is the Mars Rover problem. -
12:58 - 13:01How do you get back an accurate view
of the color on Mars -
13:01 - 13:05if you have a really terrible
bandwidth to do it with? -
13:05 - 13:07And the answer is not complicated
-
13:07 - 13:10but it's one which I don't want
to go through here, -
13:10 - 13:12other than to say
that the communication systems -
13:12 - 13:15for doing this are really
pretty well understood. -
13:15 - 13:17Also, a fact which you may not know
-
13:17 - 13:20is that the compute
capability of this thing -
13:20 - 13:22is not so different
from the compute capability -
13:22 - 13:24of your desktop computer.
-
13:24 - 13:28This is a fantastic device
which is only beginning to be tapped. -
13:28 - 13:32I don't know whether the idea of
one computer, one child makes any sense. -
13:32 - 13:34Here's the computer of the future,
-
13:34 - 13:37because this screen is already
there and they're ubiquitous. -
13:39 - 13:42All right now let me show you just
a little bit about advanced devices. -
13:42 - 13:44And we'll start by posing
a little problem. -
13:44 - 13:47What you see here
is another centimeter-sized device, -
13:48 - 13:51and the different colors
are different colors of dye. -
13:52 - 13:54And you notice something
which might strike you -
13:54 - 13:56as a little bit interesting,
-
13:56 - 13:58which is the yellow seems to disappear,
-
13:58 - 14:01get through the blue,
and then get through the red. -
14:01 - 14:03How does that happen?
-
14:03 - 14:05How do you make something
flow through something? -
14:05 - 14:07And, of course the answer is, "You don't."
-
14:07 - 14:09You make it flow under and over.
-
14:09 - 14:11But now the question is:
How do you make it flow -
14:11 - 14:13under and over in a piece of paper?
-
14:14 - 14:16The answer is that what you do -
-
14:16 - 14:19and the details are not
terribly important here - -
14:19 - 14:21is to make something more elaborate:
-
14:21 - 14:23You take several different
layers of paper, -
14:23 - 14:26each one containing
its own little fluid system, -
14:26 - 14:28and you separate them by pieces of,
-
14:28 - 14:31literally, double-sided carpet tape,
-
14:31 - 14:34the stuff you use to stick
the carpets onto the floor. -
14:34 - 14:37And the fluid will flow
from one layer into the next. -
14:37 - 14:40It distributes itself,
flows through further holes, -
14:40 - 14:42distributes itself.
-
14:42 - 14:45And what you see, at the lower
right-hand side there, -
14:45 - 14:48is a sample in which a single sample
-
14:48 - 14:50of blood has been put on the top,
-
14:50 - 14:53and it has gone
through and distributed itself -
14:53 - 14:56into these 16 holes on the bottom,
-
14:56 - 14:59in a piece of paper -
basically it looks like a chip, -
14:59 - 15:00two pieces of paper thick.
-
15:01 - 15:03And in this particular case
we were just interested -
15:04 - 15:05in the replicability of that.
-
15:05 - 15:07But that is, in principle,
the way you solve -
15:07 - 15:10the "fever of unexplained origin" problem,
-
15:10 - 15:12because each one of those spots
then becomes -
15:12 - 15:16a test for a particular set
of markers of disease, -
15:16 - 15:18and this will work in due course.
-
15:18 - 15:22Here is an example of a slightly
more complicated device. -
15:22 - 15:23There's the chip.
-
15:23 - 15:26You dip in a corner.
The fluid goes into the center. -
15:26 - 15:28It distributes itself
out into these various -
15:28 - 15:31wells or holes, and turns color,
-
15:31 - 15:34and all done with paper and carpet tape.
-
15:34 - 15:36So, I think it's as low-cost
-
15:36 - 15:38as we're likely to be able
to come up and make things. -
15:39 - 15:43Now, I have one last,
two last little stories to tell you, -
15:43 - 15:45in finishing off this business.
-
15:45 - 15:48This is one: One of the things
that one does occasionally -
15:48 - 15:52need to do is to separate
blood cells from serum. -
15:53 - 15:55And the question was,
-
15:55 - 15:57here we do it by taking a sample,
-
15:57 - 15:59we put it in a centrifuge,
-
15:59 - 16:04we spin it, and you get blood cells out.
Terrific. -
16:04 - 16:06What happens if you don't
have an electricity, -
16:06 - 16:08and a centrifuge, and whatever?
-
16:08 - 16:10And we thought
for a while of how you might do this -
16:10 - 16:13and the way, in fact,
you do it is what's shown here. -
16:13 - 16:15You get an eggbeater,
-
16:15 - 16:18which is everywhere,
and you saw off a blade, -
16:18 - 16:20and then you take tubing,
and you stick it on that. -
16:20 - 16:22You put the blood in, you spin it -
-
16:22 - 16:24somebody sits there and spins it.
-
16:24 - 16:25It works really, really well.
-
16:25 - 16:28And we sat down,
we did the physics of eggbeaters -
16:28 - 16:31and self-aligning tubes
and all the rest of that kind of thing, -
16:31 - 16:32sent it off to a journal.
-
16:32 - 16:35We were very proud of this,
particularly the title, -
16:35 - 16:36which was "Eggbeater as Centrifuge."
-
16:36 - 16:37(Laughter)
-
16:37 - 16:40And we sent it off, and by return mail
it came back. -
16:40 - 16:42I called up the editor and I said,
-
16:42 - 16:44"What's going on? How is this possible?"
-
16:44 - 16:47The editor said, with enormous disdain,
-
16:47 - 16:49"I read this.
-
16:49 - 16:51And we're not going to publish it,
-
16:51 - 16:53because we only publish science."
-
16:54 - 16:56And it's an important issue
-
16:56 - 16:58because it means that we have to,
-
16:58 - 16:59as a society,
-
16:59 - 17:01think about what we value.
-
17:01 - 17:04And if it's just papers
and phys. rev. letters, -
17:04 - 17:05we've got a problem.
-
17:06 - 17:09Here is another example
of something which is - -
17:09 - 17:11details are not important,
-
17:11 - 17:13but this is a little spectrophotometer.
-
17:14 - 17:17It measures the absorption
of light in a sample -
17:19 - 17:22The neat thing about this is,
you have light source that flickers -
17:22 - 17:24on and off at about 1,000 hertz,
-
17:24 - 17:28another light source that detects
that light at 1,000 hertz, -
17:28 - 17:31and so you can run this system
in broad daylight. -
17:31 - 17:35It performs about equivalently to a system
-
17:36 - 17:39that's in the order of 100,000 dollars.
-
17:40 - 17:41It costs 50 dollars.
-
17:41 - 17:43We can probably make it for 50 cents,
-
17:43 - 17:45if we put our mind to it.
-
17:45 - 17:47Why doesn't somebody do it?
-
17:47 - 17:48And the answer is,
-
17:48 - 17:51"How do you make a profit
in a capitalist system, doing that?" -
17:51 - 17:53Interesting problem.
-
17:54 - 17:57So, let me finish by saying
-
17:57 - 18:01that we've thought about this
as a kind of engineering problem. -
18:01 - 18:05And we've asked: What
is the scientific unifying idea here? -
18:06 - 18:08And we've decided
that we should think about this -
18:08 - 18:09not so much in terms of cost,
-
18:09 - 18:11but in terms of simplicity.
-
18:11 - 18:13Simplicity is a neat word.
-
18:13 - 18:15And you've got to think about
what simplicity means. -
18:15 - 18:19I know what it is but I don't
actually know what it means. -
18:20 - 18:23So, I actually was interested
enough in this to put together -
18:24 - 18:26several groups of people.
-
18:26 - 18:29And the most recent involved
a couple of people at MIT, -
18:29 - 18:31one of them being
an exceptionally bright kid -
18:31 - 18:33who is one of the very
few people I would think of -
18:33 - 18:35who's an authentic genius.
-
18:35 - 18:39We all struggled for an entire
day to think about simplicity. -
18:39 - 18:41And I want to give you the answer of this
-
18:41 - 18:43deep scientific thought.
-
18:43 - 18:45[Our strategy: Simplicity.
What is simplicity?] -
18:45 - 18:49["It's impossible to f..k it up"]
(Laughter) -
18:50 - 18:52So, in a sense, you get what you pay for.
-
18:52 - 18:54Thank you very much.
-
18:55 - 18:56(Laughter) (Applause)
- Title:
- A lab the size of a postage stamp | George Whitesides | TEDxBoston
- Description:
-
Traditional lab tests for disease diagnosis can be too expensive and cumbersome for the regions most in need. George Whitesides' ingenious answer is a foolproof tool that can be manufactured at virtually zero cost.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 18:58
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Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for A lab the size of a postage stamp | George Whitesides | TEDxBoston | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for A lab the size of a postage stamp | George Whitesides | TEDxBoston | ||
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for A lab the size of a postage stamp | George Whitesides | TEDxBoston | ||
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for A lab the size of a postage stamp | George Whitesides | TEDxBoston | ||
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for A lab the size of a postage stamp | George Whitesides | TEDxBoston |