Gratitude for a great Symposium on Open Guidelines for RDTs 2022

What would the world look like if everyone had access to Rapid Diagnostic Tests for Covid-19, Malaria, and other communicable diseases, that could be read and easily understood on a smartphone, and that were used as soon as the first person in your community showed symptoms?

Last Thursday and Friday, the Ona Team had the honor of hosting an exceptionally productive Symposium on Open Guidelines for RDTs to discuss this and other questions. We were happy to see the enthusiastic participation and insightful questions coming from everyone who joined us. Below is the welcome slide deck, to give you a sense of the content.

We would like to thank all of our panelists, Rigveda Kadam from FIND, Luciana Rajula from PATH, Marc Abbyad from Medic, Dr. Gerhard Nebe-Von-Caron from Mologic, and Shiven Bhatt from Becton Dickinson. You can find a description of those panels on the event page. Mo Abdo from Zebra also gave an engaging walkthrough of environmental sensors embedded in QR codes – thank you Mo! Mo’s presentation stressed how Covid-19 has made clear it is essential to know the quality of the diagnostic you are using, whether conducted by a healthcare worker or as a self-test. During the Symposium, our partners at the Indonesia based Summit Institute of Development (SID) teamed up with members of the Ona team to present the results of the OG RDT Malaria and Covid-19 field studies in Kenya and Indonesia. Thank you to Yuni Dwi Setiyawati (SID) and Bella Okiddy (Ona) for illustrating how the novel advantages of OG RDT deployments are linked to improved impact.

We would like to acknowledge and thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for supporting us in this project and the essential inputs of the officers we worked with on it, including Arunan Skandarajah, Annie Ye, and Teresa Ruiz Herrero. Nearly all of the presentations are now linked from the event page, and we will be adding those remaining as they are ready.

Be certain to check the blog next week for video recordings of the sessions.