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Rethinking the Design of Low-Cost Point-of-Care Diagnostic Devices
Reducing the global diseases burden requires effective diagnosis and treatment. In the developing world, accurate diagnosis can be the most expensive and time-consuming aspect of health care. Healthcare cost can, however, be reduced by use of affordable rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs). In the develope...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6190021/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30400509 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi8110317 |
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author | Kimani, Faith W. Mwangi, Samuel M. Kwasa, Benjamin J. Kusow, Abdi M. Ngugi, Benjamin K. Chen, Jiahao Liu, Xinyu Cademartiri, Rebecca Thuo, Martin M. |
author_facet | Kimani, Faith W. Mwangi, Samuel M. Kwasa, Benjamin J. Kusow, Abdi M. Ngugi, Benjamin K. Chen, Jiahao Liu, Xinyu Cademartiri, Rebecca Thuo, Martin M. |
author_sort | Kimani, Faith W. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Reducing the global diseases burden requires effective diagnosis and treatment. In the developing world, accurate diagnosis can be the most expensive and time-consuming aspect of health care. Healthcare cost can, however, be reduced by use of affordable rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs). In the developed world, low-cost RDTs are being developed in many research laboratories; however, they are not being equally adopted in the developing countries. This disconnect points to a gap in the design philosophy, where parameterization of design variables ignores the most critical component of the system, the point-of-use stakeholders (e.g., doctors, nurses and patients). Herein, we demonstrated that a general focus on reducing cost (i.e., “low-cost”), rather than efficiency and reliability is misguided by the assumption that poverty reduces the value individuals place on their well-being. A case study of clinicians in Kenya showed that “zero-cost” is a low-weight parameter for point-of-use stakeholders, while reliability and standardization are crucial. We therefore argue that a user-driven, value-addition systems-engineering approach is needed for the design of RDTs to enhance adoption and translation into the field. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6190021 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-61900212018-11-01 Rethinking the Design of Low-Cost Point-of-Care Diagnostic Devices Kimani, Faith W. Mwangi, Samuel M. Kwasa, Benjamin J. Kusow, Abdi M. Ngugi, Benjamin K. Chen, Jiahao Liu, Xinyu Cademartiri, Rebecca Thuo, Martin M. Micromachines (Basel) Article Reducing the global diseases burden requires effective diagnosis and treatment. In the developing world, accurate diagnosis can be the most expensive and time-consuming aspect of health care. Healthcare cost can, however, be reduced by use of affordable rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs). In the developed world, low-cost RDTs are being developed in many research laboratories; however, they are not being equally adopted in the developing countries. This disconnect points to a gap in the design philosophy, where parameterization of design variables ignores the most critical component of the system, the point-of-use stakeholders (e.g., doctors, nurses and patients). Herein, we demonstrated that a general focus on reducing cost (i.e., “low-cost”), rather than efficiency and reliability is misguided by the assumption that poverty reduces the value individuals place on their well-being. A case study of clinicians in Kenya showed that “zero-cost” is a low-weight parameter for point-of-use stakeholders, while reliability and standardization are crucial. We therefore argue that a user-driven, value-addition systems-engineering approach is needed for the design of RDTs to enhance adoption and translation into the field. MDPI 2017-10-27 /pmc/articles/PMC6190021/ /pubmed/30400509 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi8110317 Text en © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Kimani, Faith W. Mwangi, Samuel M. Kwasa, Benjamin J. Kusow, Abdi M. Ngugi, Benjamin K. Chen, Jiahao Liu, Xinyu Cademartiri, Rebecca Thuo, Martin M. Rethinking the Design of Low-Cost Point-of-Care Diagnostic Devices |
title | Rethinking the Design of Low-Cost Point-of-Care Diagnostic Devices |
title_full | Rethinking the Design of Low-Cost Point-of-Care Diagnostic Devices |
title_fullStr | Rethinking the Design of Low-Cost Point-of-Care Diagnostic Devices |
title_full_unstemmed | Rethinking the Design of Low-Cost Point-of-Care Diagnostic Devices |
title_short | Rethinking the Design of Low-Cost Point-of-Care Diagnostic Devices |
title_sort | rethinking the design of low-cost point-of-care diagnostic devices |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6190021/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30400509 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi8110317 |
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