Combining development, capacity building and responsible innovation in GCRF‐funded medical technology research

Abstract

Development-oriented funding schemes such as the UK Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) have opened up opportunities for collaborations between low-middle income countries (LMICs) and high-income country (HIC) researchers. In particular, funding for medical technology research has seen a rise in previously underrepresented disciplines such as physics and engineering. These collaborations have considerable potential to advance healthcare in LMICs, yet can pose challenges experienced to researchers undertaking these collaborations. Key challenges include a lack of tradition of HIC/LMIC collaborations within participating departments, lack of experience with development agendas, designing contextually-appropriate technologies and ensuring long-term viability of research outputs. This paper reflects on these key challenges, using the experiences of the authors on the Open Laboratory Instrumentation (OLI) project as a focalizing lens. This project was a GCRF-funded collaboration between physicists in the UK and engineers in Tanzania to develop an open-source, 3D-printed, fully-automated laboratory microscope. The paper highlights key ethics lessons learnt.

Business Models for Open Source Hardware Repositories

“…For example, India published a list of products it needed during the pandemic and if they could be had with distributed manufacturing may have paid for the most critical designs to be validated. This is particularly important as FOSH not only can directly fulfil needs but it also can be used for capacity building for low-middle income countries (LMICs) (Bezuidenhout, et al, 2022).…”

Equitable Research Capacity Towards the Sustainable Development Goals: The Case for Open Science Hardware

“…As end-users are in close proximity, manufacturers can address problems with the equipment locally and incorporate improvements on demand (Stirling et al 2020). The available microscopes have provided reliable data used by researchers to explore new methods including automated detection, and the manufacturer is in the process of medical certification in Tanzania (Bezuidenhout et al 2022). Since 2015, OpenFlexure has grown into a global community of users and developers on every continent, including professional scientists, hobbyists, community scientists, clinical researchers, and teachers (Arancio and Dosemagen 2022).…”

Open hardware: From DIY trend to global transformation in access to laboratory equipment

“…By contrast, scientists who develop open technologies with a more ambitious definition of accessibility, with globally available tools and at lower cost, continue to face important symbolic and institutional restrictions, despite the multiple benefits for scientific and technological development of such an approach [ 30 ]. Such self-builds are sometimes viewed as unprofessional or unsuccessful in grant applications and, until recently, faced barriers from academic journals to publish their work.…”