SAFE SURGERY GLOBAL - Key Persons
Dr. Paul Barton is an anesthesiologist from San Antonio, Texas. He served as a missionary doctor in Guatemala, Haiti, and Macedonia. During his time in these countries, he found surgical units without the equipment to operate safely, and donated equipment broken in the corner.
He was disturbed with the reality that people were dying around the world for lack of basic vital signs equipment - and that the needed equipment was too large and expensive to get to those who needed it most. There had to be a better way.
He yearned to have a device that was mobile and "ownable," a vital signs device that was small and robust enough to consistently work accurately in a remote location. It also had to be a device that a person or group would have the capacity and incentive to maintain over time. He saw the smartphone in the hand of doctors and medics everywhere on earth, and recognized that it carried more computing power than the moon-bound US space program. Could we leverage the technology they already had, to deliver a solution they so desperately needed?