Diagnostics for LMICs 2024 Conference
Tuesday 2 & Wednesday 3 July 2024
Welcome from the organising committee
Reports about the 2023 inaugural conference
Welcome from the organising committee
On behalf of the organising committee, Reuben College and the University of Oxford, it will be my great pleasure to welcome you to this international conference on diagnostics in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) on the 2 and 3 July 2024. To know that several of you will have travelled from far and wide to be with us for the Conference is not only warmly appreciated but testament to the dedication that we all have for trying to bring positive changes to LMICs. This conference is the second gathering of an annual global health meeting hosted by Reuben College.
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.
From 2018 to 2021, Dr Ken Fleming, the former Head of the Medical Sciences Division in Oxford, 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 recommended 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.
Too often, however, there is inadequate or ineffective communication between engineers, scientists and clinicians on what is actually needed in the clinic and can be delivered, especially in LMICs. Our inaugural conference last year built on the work of the Lancet Commission, and was opened by Dr Fleming.
Focus for the Conference
This year’s conference (Dx4LMICS24) will continue to focus on catalysing the development and delivery of new diagnostics for LMICs. It will have a joint session during the first afternoon with the International Pandemic Sciences Conference, also being held in Oxford at the same time, for further details please visit the Pandemics Sciences conference website by clicking this link. Reuben College 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).
In the organisation of last year’s conference, we established an excellent working relationship with colleagues from UCL, and they will again be involved in all sessions of this year’s conference, especially during the first morning. Professor Rachel McKendry, Professor of Biomedicine and Nanotechnology at UCL, and Professor Gari Clifford, formerly an Associate Professor here in Oxford and now the Chair of Emory University's Department of Biomedical Informatics, are the co-chairs of this year’s conference. Gordon Sanghera, the CEO of Oxford Nanopore, will again bring his inimitable reflections on the topics which we will be discussing during our two-day conference.
I very much look forward to interacting and collaborating with all the Conference participants on Tuesday 2 and Wednesday 3 July 2024.
Lionel
Professor Lord (Lionel) Tarassenko CBE FREng FMedSci
President of Reuben College
Professor of Electrical Engineering
University of Oxford
Registration
The conference is free to attend to graduate students and early career researchers from Oxford University, with participation from UCL also.
If you would like to attend the conference please show your interest by completing this form.
Completing this form does not confirm your attendance at the conference, once you have submitted this form the conference team will review your form and be in touch with if you have been accepted or not in due course.
The second (now annual) conference, will have a joint session with the International Pandemic Sciences Conference, also being held in Oxford at the same time. The International Pandemic Sciences Conference 2024, hosted by the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford, is taking place on 1-2 July. To book for this conference please visit their website by clicking this link.
Reports about the inaugural conference
“It was a great pleasure attending such a wonderful, very timely and highly relevant conference.”
The official report on last year’s conference can be viewed here.
There was also a blog post from Reuben student Sintieh, about the conference and their experience.
