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Session: Medical devices & safety
Session starts: Thursday 24 January, 10:30
Presentation starts: 10:45
Room: Lecture room 535

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GYoung Van (Delft University of Technology)
Jan-Carel Diehl (Delft University of Technology)
Jo M.L. van Engelen (Delft University of Technology)

Abstract:
Parasitic diseases are the main cause of the global health burden which accounts for over 30% of the Disability-Adjusted Life Years and 15 million deaths annually [1]. Accurate and timely diagnosis is essential to reliable medical treatment that can significantly reduce the risk. However, in low-resource settings, diagnostic tests are usually unavailable or inaccessible [2]. There have been previous researches to deploy new technologies to develop new point-of-care devices or alternative laboratory equipment to increase accessibility of diagnostic tests. While existing approaches put more emphasis on optimising the technical performance, there is a tendency to neglect the different types of end-users and usage contexts. Evidently, disseminating new diagnostic technologies does not ensure the adoption of it. [3]. Without profound user- and context-of-usage analysis, there is a high risk of failure in the adoption and scale-up of the new diagnostic devices. This was shown in the case of malaria rapid diagnostic tests which were developed for the community and primary healthcare level but remained unused in these settings [4]. Amongst different barriers identified in the previous research [4], involving end-users in the research process was considered critical to strengthening innovation and successful adoption [5]. Therefore, we focused our research on the issues related to the end-users and usage contexts to create a user and context framework. The framework will provide a basis for understanding the user and context related barriers and opportunities. Based on the beliefs and behaviours of the end-users [5] and limitations from the infrastructure [6], the findings will be used to draw out inclusive user specifications for a new diagnostic device. We believe that putting additional efforts upfront to user and context analysis will significantly raise the probability of success.