This Little Sticker Works Like an Anti-Mosquito Force Field | Wired Design

This is where science and crowd-sourcing get together effectively to solve a global problem. Somehow I wasn’t surprised that field testing is going to be done in Uganda at the end of the year. Pricing this effectively is going to be a challenge. But if it works, we may be on the way to solving the mosquito-borne diseases problem.

Essentially, the Kite Patch is a little square sticker that emits a cloak of chemical compounds that blocks a mosquito’s ability to sense humans. According to its developers, users simply have to place the patch onto their clothes, and they become invisible to mosquitoes for up to 48 hours. This is big news for developing countries like Uganda, where residents have little beyond mosquito nets and toxic sprays to combat the illness-spreading insects.

That’s exactly where Kite’s creators, a collaborative team made up of innovation venture capital group ieCrowd and Olfactor Laboratories, intend to ship these off to as soon as they’re done blowing past their second goal on global crowdsourcing site Indiegogo. Launched just last month, the campaign surpassed its original goal of $75,000 in just four days and is now gunning for a new goal of $385,000 (currently at $336,000).

via This Little Sticker Works Like an Anti-Mosquito Force Field | Wired Design | Wired.com.