Diagnostics for LMIC Conference

Welcome from the organising committee

On behalf of the organising committee, Reuben College and the University of Oxford, it is my great pleasure to welcome you to this international conference on diagnostics in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). That many of you will have travelled from far and wide to be here is not only warmly appreciated but testament to the dedication that we all have for trying to bring positive changes to the world via our respective disciplines. This conference is the inaugural gathering of an annual global health meeting to be hosted by Reuben College here in Oxford. 

Background to this conference

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us many lessons, but arguably the first lesson was that in medicine, timely accurate diagnosis is required to deliver appropriate disease management and patient care. The second was that capacity and capability to provide such timely accurate diagnosis are inadequate in all countries – but especially in LMICs.

These lessons are not new. From 2018 to 2021, Dr Ken Fleming chaired a Lancet Commission on Diagnostics. This arose out a growing awareness amongst the global health community that lack of access to good diagnostics is a major constraint on the provision of good-quality health care globally. To address these challenges, the Commission made multiple recommendations, a key one being that the application of the recent technological advances in engineering, computing, digitisation, and mobile communications should be accelerated to solve the problems of quicker, cheaper, and more accessible diagnostics. This particularly applies to point-of-care testing – rapid testing close to the patient – allowing management and care decisions to be taken more or less immediately. Major expansion of such capacity will be vital to develop our response to emerging pathogens but also to diagnose diseases such as Tuberculosis (TB), HIV, renal failure and cancers such as chronic myeloid leukaemia or breast carcinomas.

During the Commission’s discussions, a recurring theme was that the development of a great diagnostic, using state-of-the-art technology, often combined with AI to analyse the data, led to excellent results, but was a commercial failure because it did not address the specific problem the clinicians needed solving. Too often there has been inadequate or ineffective communication between engineers, scientists and clinicians on what is actually needed in the clinic and can be delivered, especially in the developing world.

Such a failure of communication between different disciplinary groups can be tackled by convening an annual international conference which brings the various parties together to exchange ideas and to develop mutually beneficial projects. However, currently there is no such international forum solely dedicated to bringing technology innovators and clinicians together in the field of healthcare diagnostics for LMICs, and so our inaugural conference on this topic builds on the work of the Lancet Commission, and the Chair of the Commission, Dr Fleming, will open the conference.

Focus for the Conference

The conference will focus on catalysing the development and delivery of new diagnostics for LMICs. As the University of Oxford’s newest college, Reuben has a very strong multidisciplinary ethos and has the convening power of all Oxford colleges. It has a special interest in the application of technological and computing advances to improve health and has an international graduate student programme, including scholarships for students from the developing world (where the diagnostics challenges are most acute).

The conference will also focus on diagnostics to be used at the primary care level, with in-vitro diagnostics, apps and informatics as key technological enablers. Clinical topics will include infectious diseases, neurological disorders, and non-communicable diseases. As the Commission report stated: “Through self-testing, self-sampling, and community use, point-of-care diagnostics are key enablers of democratisation of diagnostics and patient- centred care.”

This website consolidates all the material pertinent to the conference, including the programme, abstracts and speaker biographies, as well as information about travel and accommodation. Exact timings for sessions and the order of speakers will be confirmed in due course.  

I very much look forward to continuing our interaction and collaboration over the coming days. 

Lionel

Professor Lionel Tarassenko CBE FREng FMedSci
President of Reuben College 
Professor of Electrical Engineering
University of Oxford

Reports about the conference

“It was a great pleasure attending such a wonderful, very timely and highly relevant conference.”

The official report on the conference can be viewed here.

There is also a blog post from Reuben student Sintieh, about the conference and their experience.