The Science and Policies of DIY Medical Technologies: Health Makers from Matagalpa to Montana

Abstract – The growing disparities in health resources around the world, long tail medical devices to address orphan conditions and the demedicalization of a growing sectors of health devices is revealing and evolving patterns of DIY fabrication in healthcare settings around the world. Our group researches ways to empower patients, healthcare providers, and non-traditional actors to create their own medical technologies using a variety of tools such as kits, pop up laboratories, supply chain arbitrage of consumer devices, and Design for Hack strategies of engineering. We will present on going results and technologies from our work in Medical Education Design and Invention Kits (MEDIKits) in the developing world, the MakerNurse project in hospitals around America, and crowdsourced techniques for real time surveillance and epidemiology in Europe, New Zealand and South America. Each project makes use of our construction sets for MEDIKits, pop up labs, and interactive diagnostics to explore what happens when patients and providers change their relationship from receivers and providers to co-designers. These are part of an ongoing approach to democratize medical fabrication that is highlighting policy implications for regulatory strategy, intellectual property, professional medical education and patient ethics. Furthermore, we explore how DIY as a strategy is responding to an industrial complex of medical devices and international development and their relationship with early stage innovation.

Biography – Jose Gomez-Marquez directs the Little Devices Lab MIT’ International Design Centre. He is a co-inventor the MEDIKit platform, a series of design building blocks that empower doctors and nurses in developing countries to invent their own medical technologies. His other research projects include crowdsourced diagnostics, paper microfluidics, and reconfigurable diagnostics for extreme environments. Jose has served on the European Union’s Science Against Poverty Taskforce and has participated as an expert advisor in the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In 2009, Jose was selected to Technology Review’s TR35, which also named him Humanitarian of the Year. In 2011 he was named a TED Fellow. He arrived to the United States from his native Honduras on a Rotary exchange and currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.