Giancarlo Is Creating The Most Affordable Medical Treatments On Earth
Driven by a need to improve the quality of lives of people and ease access to healthcare, Giancarlo Beukes, 2018 TEF Alumnus, co-founded Impulse, a multi award-winning medical devices start-up aimed at rethinking medical practices for the betterment of those who need it most.
The goal of Impulse to develop mature innovative and frugal medical technologies, within developing-world markets, into small companies, which can be licensed to large pharmaceutical companies for developed-world market scaling.
The focus of Impulse’s innovation is on two primary technologies in the fields of paediatric asthma and allergy by adopting the Frugal Bio design – a unique approach to medical device design that is suited specifically to developing countries.
This South African Biomedical Engineer has built a cheap replacement for the EpiPen that has the potential to revolutionise the emergency treatment of anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction that can be triggered by food or insect bites.
His latest devices, ZiBiPen is aimed at revolutionising the emergency treatment of anaphylaxis. This device further proves that that life-saving treatment can be as affordable as it is effective. It is popularly known as ‘the future of allergy attacks’ and delivers its dose in the form of a reloadable cartridge at a fraction of the cost of the dominant device on the market.
The ZiBiPen is in the second phase of development to make sure the device is both effective and safe for use by all ages and body types and will be available in 2022 and will be the only reloadable adrenaline autoinjector and has customisable depth of injection to improve injection effectiveness.
As a truly innovative organisation, Impulse has other products in its pipeline, including the Easy Squeezy, a device that attaches to a standard asthma pump, making it easier for young children, elderly and disabled patients to activate the device when they are struggling to breathe during an asthma attack.
Giancarlo lives by the moto – “If you’re not making someone else’s life better, then you’re wasting your time.” This philosophy has greatly influenced all of the ground-breaking work by Impulse in the last couple of years.
