A hub for collaborative, open-source medical technology

Solutions at the point of care – with local, regional, and international support

The OpenLab MedTec is an experimental and meeting space for clinical personnel, practitioners and technicians.

How?

Creating the conditions for technical innovations to improve the work environment of medical personnel in diagnostics, therapy, and care: Technical equipment, on-site staff, and workshop offerings to raise awareness of digital fabrication, prototype manufacturing, Open Source MedTec. Early involvement of clinical staff and expertise in potential medical technology development.

What?

Linking to existing and emerging Open Source MedTec solutions for hospitals, such as 3D printing of stethoscopes or accessories, models for surgical preparation, implant modeling. Raising awareness and exploring collaborative open source development approaches and their opportunities for public healthcare systems. Sustainable, collaborative, global development of medical products through Open Source MedTech.

Open Labs in Medical Technology

…are open workshops that provide access to modern manufacturing machines to implement technical solutions on-site. They are practical hubs that bring together developers, users, and the open source community to collectively develop technical solutions and make them accessible to the public, including other hospitals.

Open Source Hardware

Machines, electronics, tools, whose blueprints are publicly accessible under an open source license, allowing everyone to study, modify, distribute, and manufacture and sell hardware based on them.

Importance for medical technology:

• Free international cooperation between clinic research, producers (…) where regulations permit.
• Faster, more cost-effective, and practical development of solutions.
• Better coverage of special cases.
• No vendor lock-in: significantly lower acquisition and maintenance costs.

Examples

OSI² ONE

• Low-field MRI (50mT).
• Mobile deployment.
• Material costs of around €20,000.
• Replicas in the Netherlands, Uganda, and Germany (as of April 2023).
• Open source documentation: https://gitlab.com/osii-one/

Glia Stethoscope

• Material costs approximately $7 (mainly 3D printing).
• Proven performance for clinical use (comparable to Cardiology III by Littmann).

echOpen

• Compact ultrasound device.
• Emerged from an open-source project at an OpenLab in Hôtel-Dieu Hospital in Paris.
• echopen.org

Ansprechpartner

Dr. Lukas Winter

Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)
E-Mail: lukas.winter@ptb.de
Tel.: (+49) 30-3481-7573

Martin Häuer

Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)
E-Mail: martin.haeuer@ptb.de
Tel.: (+49) 30-3481-7411