Olusegun Areola

Nigerian inventor of low-cost medical devices for rural healthcare

Olusegun Areola (b. 1990) transformed healthcare access in sub-Saharan Africa through affordable medical innovations. His 2014 invention of the MediBox - a solar-powered diagnostic toolkit costing $250 (vs $15k for comparable devices) - has been deployed in 350+ rural clinics. This portable unit performs 25+ tests including malaria and HIV using paper-based microfluidics. Areola's 2018 creation of DentAlly, a smartphone-connected dental imaging system, reduced diagnostic errors by 70% in Nigerian clinics. His partnership with UNICEF since 2020 has distributed 10,000+ units across 14 countries. Areola's TEDGlobal talk "Engineering Equality" earned a standing ovation, and his recent work on malaria detection patches won the 2022 Africa Innovation Prize. He currently leads Affordable Health Tech Initiative, training 500+ engineers annually to create locally relevant medical solutions.