Description of Session
In developing countries, access to appropriate laboratory equipment is a major constraint to effective surveillance of infectious disease and antibiotic resistance. Even when equipment is available, it is often not appropriate to the local context – too easily broken, intolerant of the local electric grid, not locally serviceable, etc. But emerging tools and approaches in the design and implementation of hardware create the possibility of a new paradigm in diagnostic tools: open source lab equipment created for users in diverse contexts using human centered design. In this session, Rob Ryan-Silva from the DAI Maker Lab will explain how open source laboratory hardware can shift long-standing assumptions about who can do sophisticated laboratory work, and where. He will introduce some of the existing open source designs for equipment like PCR thermocyclers, gel electrophoresis devices, and even rudimentary diagnostic imaging systems. This talk is paired with an "Appy Hour" demonstration of some of these open source designs so that attendees can see and interact with some of these designs and discuss how they could be integrated into real-world programming.
