Trisa Wahyu Nurhayati

Indonesian engineer developing affordable neonatal tech for rural communities

Trisa Wahyu Nurhayati (b. 1988), a biomedical engineer from East Java, created NeoVent—a $200 portable ventilator for premature babies, addressing Indonesia's high neonatal mortality rate (15 deaths per 1,000 births).

Her solar-powered device mimics gentle skin-to-skin ‘kangaroo care’ vibrations, critical for underdeveloped lungs. Traditional ICU ventilators cost $20,000+ and require stable electricity—unavailable in 40% of Indonesian clinics. NeoVent's bamboo-and-recycled-plastic design works offline, saving over 3,200 infants since 2017.

Nurhayati crowdsourced designs through her ‘Maker Movement Indonesia’ platform, training midwives to 3D-print medical tools. This decentralized approach challenges Western medical hegemony, proving low-resource innovation can outperform high-tech solutions.