Open Source Medical Devices for Innovation, Education and Global Health: Case Study of Open Source Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Today's societies are challenged by the increasing costs of healthcare and global inequality in the availability, accessibility, appropriateness and affordability (4As) of medical technologies. Open source medical technology (medTech) offers an opportunity to improve equality and efficiency and decrease costs dramatically. Many services and products are experiencing a paradigm shift toward an open-source economic model that can be extended to medical technologies in a way that will intrinsically promote sustainable growth and innovations while improving education and global health. This new way of thinking offers an infrastructure by which many sectors of global health can be democratized. In my talk I will focus on our concrete efforts to build a completely open source magnetic resonance imaging scanner (MRI). Based on our design, the global savings of such an instrument could potentially reach $3.3 billion within about 20 years. After introducing the basic physics behind MRI, I will show current developments on high end ultra-high field MR systems and consequently move to technological innovations that allow to gather MR images for a fraction of current prices. But technological innovations alone are not sufficient to guarantee improvements in the 4As. Consequently an in-depth discussion will follow on an open source eco-system with open (source) science and reproducible research at its core. Implementing a series of milestones to allow a widespread development of open source medical technology might improve health on a national and global scale in a way that is less restricted by current political and economic borders.