This MIT Media Lab team will be leading a hackathon to modernize the breast pump. Most of the time, I think men can’t handle the reality of women’s health. It’s messy, bloody, lumpy, and hard to relate to, unpredictable. This is a big reason that women aren’t included in clinical trials in the same numbers as men and women do not receive the same care that men do, particularly women who have heart disease. I was delighted to see this attitude is changing, particularly around the squishy and controversial topic of breastfeeding. MIT’s Media lab is holding a hackathon this weekend to modernize the breast pump. More than 150 breast pump users, engineers, designers, lactation specialists and educators have signed up. The organizers were inspired by a blog post from the New York Times in March. Two writers who are also parents wondered why the pump is stuck in the ’50s: Edward Lasker, an engineer, produced the first mechanical breast pump and secured the patent in the 1920s. In 1956, Einar Egnell created the Egnell SMB breast pump, a more efficient answer to Lasker’s original design. Nearly 60 years later, little has changed about the fundamental design of the mechanical pump.

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