Industrial designer Rebecca Weiss has won Germany's James Dyson Award which "celebrates, encourages and inspires the designers of new problem-solving ideas." The problem she is trying to solve is the limited number of male birth control options. The proposed solution is a new kind of male contraception device enabling the testicles to be periodically submerged in an ultrasound bath to inhibit sperm motility. Weiss is now on the shortlist for the international prize to be announced next month.
Here's how the device would operate:
The user puts water into the device up to the indicated mark which is set together with a doctor according to individual testicle size. Then the water is heated up to operating temperature. COSO is ready for ultrasound treatment. The user spreads his legs and sits down to place the testicles in the device. The ultrasound process continues for a few minutes. The remaining time can be monitored in real time via the COSO app. After the treatment, the device switches off automatically. The technology of the COSO is based on a study of the Parsemus Foundation from 2012 in which successful research was conducted on ultrasound contraception. So far, the procedure has been applied to animals. Therefore, the technical parameters are hypothetically transferred to humans.
"Coso – The New Way of Male Contraception" (James Dyson Award)
