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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...

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Autores principales: Kimani, Faith W., Mwangi, Samuel M., Kwasa, Benjamin J., Kusow, Abdi M., Ngugi, Benjamin K., Chen, Jiahao, Liu, Xinyu, Cademartiri, Rebecca, Thuo, Martin M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2017
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.
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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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