Jose Gomez-Marquez

• 2,500-3,000 students participate in

annual service projects

• 200-300 are international settings

• 8 Classes
• D-Lab I: Intro de International Development
• D-Lab II: Design for Development
• D-Lab III: Dissemination of Technology
• D-Lab Sector classes: ICT, Health, Prosthetics,
Wheelchair Design, Energy, and Cycle Ventures
• D-Ventures: Entrepreneurial Business Models for
Development

• 25 country settings and over 40 projects

• Nicaragua, Honduras, Peru, Mexico, Tanzania, Ghana, India,
Nepal, etc.
Appropriate Technology Participatory Design Co-Creation
“We know what you need” “Tell us what you need, “Let’s design together”
We’ll design it”
 Medical Device Innovation for the Next Four
Billion

 Global Collaboration Partners

 Accelerated Product Development Priority

 Accelerated CPS Collaborative
Product Innovation
Development

CPS, Collaborative Public Space (Breznitz)

 PRODUCT!

Source: LabChip, 2007, 7, 41–57

Affordable/ Expensive/
High Impact High Impact

Impact
Resources

Affordable/ Expensive/
Low Appropriate Impact Low Appropriate Impact

11
SNAP
Simple Nucleic Acid Processing
Development Team: MIT Mechanical Engineer, BMW Mechanical Engineer, Art Center Industrial Designer, MIT Biologist,
and Guinean Bricklayer who was a Red Cross Field Volunteer
 Card enabled
community
glucometers
 Biometric driven
patient history

 What’s next
 Open Source Testing
Strips
Disease
Surveillance
Disease
Surveillance
Disease
Surveillance
M-Lab
 Hybridization 
 Vintage Technologies + Smart Design/Tech =
New Solutions
 Taking the improvisation and engineering
solutions 
 Bottom up observation 
 Be trendsetting, not trendy
 Context shifting
 Distributed Systems
 Crowdsourcing
 Hybridization

+
Coca Cola Spacer for Asthma
Inhalers
 Drug Delivery
 Diagnostics
 Microfluidics
 Instrumentation
 Mobile Health
 Prosthetic Design
 Imaging
 Empower local medical innovators
 Create a Collaborative Language of
Design
 Stimulate trickle up technologies
 Address stratified gaps among
professionals
 Get devices safely to trials, and to
the
point of care
 Urban
 7,705 pieces of equipment
 9% are operating irregularly
 18% are not in service
 Rural
 1,681 pieces of equipment
 25% not in service
 Technical Personnel
 80% lack formal training
 15% have basic or mid-level technical
 5% have advanced or university-level education
 Complexity
 Instruction vs. DIY
 Barriers towards innovation
 Fear
 Incremental fixes
 Rural brain drain
 Development of in-country manufacturing methods of lab-on-chip
technology
 Xurography brings the cost of microfluidic prototyping down to
$300-400 per lab
 Cell manufacturers of tuberculosis compliance diagnostics
using local resources
 A video conference discussing auto-disable syringe designs

with Nicaraguan and MIT design coaches
 Importance of local product development in
Nicaragua
 Flexibility of incentives
 Flexibility of communication vehicles
 Development of distributed manufacturing
techniques