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

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 under-represented 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.

Robotic microscopy for everyone: the OpenFlexure microscope.

Optical microscopes are an essential tool for both the detection of disease in clinics, and for scientific analysis. However, in much of the world access to high-performance microscopy is limited by both the upfront cost and maintenance cost of the equipment. Here we present an open-source, 3D-printed, and fully-automated laboratory microscope, with motorised sample positioning and focus control. The microscope is highly customisable, with a number of options readily available including trans- and epi- illumination, polarisation contrast imaging, and epi-florescence imaging. The OpenFlexure microscope has been designed to enable low-volume manufacturing and maintenance by local personnel, vastly increasing accessibility. We have produced over 100 microscopes in Tanzania and Kenya for educational, scientific, and clinical applications, demonstrating that local manufacturing can be a viable alternative to international supply chains that can often be costly, slow, and unreliable.