Construction Kits for Health

Jose Gomez-Marquez

Little Devices @ MIT

Construction Kit methodology applied to global health hardware settings generated an enabling fabrication framework aimed at making clinical technologies accessible, transparent in their design, and inviting for reinvention at the bedside.

The Ampli Project is a science experimentation kit that enable rapid experimentation and practice of molecular biology, chemistry, and experimental design concepts.

Ampli kits utilize interchangeable, modular components that intuitively connect like building blocks and use membrane substrates to create diagnostics and analytical tools for life science research.

These biological breadboards aims to push transparency, replications and new communities of practice in bioassays. The OpenDx platform is working with colleagues around the world to create open access distribution of diagnostic protocol so that anyone, anywhere in the world with access and the need for patient care can develop their own rapid tests. To foster an equitable development of tropical disease diagnostics and treatments, our Fair Trade Biotech initiative is developing policies to create research volunteer friendly supply chains that benefit the communities local to biological specimens.

Bio:

Jose Gomez-Marquez directs medical technology design at Little Devices @ MIT and is a co-founder of MakerHealth which creates makerspaces and instruments medical making in hospitals and communities around the country.

He is co-inventor the MEDIKit and Ampli platforms, a series of design building blocks that empower doctors and nurses to invent their own medical technologies.

Other projects include crowdsourced diagnostics, paper microfluidics, and affordable diagnostics for Zika, Ebola and Dengue.

Jose has served on the EU’s Science Against Poverty Taskforce and has participated as an expert advisor in the President Obama’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. Recently, he launched the MakerNurse project to advance nurse innovation in America with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Originally from Honduras, he currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts