Using disruptive innovation to design endoscopic ligators for resource-challenged health settings.

Background: Commercial single-use endoscopic multiband ligators, used for esophageal variceal band ligation (EVL), are prohibitively expensive. To enable greater access to EVL, we used disruptive innovation to develop a novel endoscopic multiband ligator.

Methods: We designed and tested a prototype handle 'ENDOhandle' using computer-aided design modeling and exported a cap, trigger cord and latex to form a functional banding unit.

Results: The cost of the banding unit was US$4.80 compared with several hundred US dollars for commercially available devices in the USA.

Conclusions: Disruptive innovation technology developed an inexpensive ligator for resource-challenged health settings.