Many people living in resource-poor settings have never had access to the laboratory facilities or technical expertise that are needed to diagnose diseases. With the development and deployment of a new generation of affordable, easy-to-use, and portable diagnostic devices that are designed for places with no laboratory infrastructure, the global landscape of diagnosis is dramatically changing. Can portable diagnostic devices strengthen health systems in resource-poor settings?

DiaDev is the first study to comprehensively address this question through comparison across multiple devices, sites of production, and contexts of use. Diagnostic technologies are often championed as universal solutions to health equity and access. Bringing together approaches from anthropology and science and technology studies, this ground breaking ethnographic study investigates the extent to which how diagnostic devices work and what they can achieve depends on the locally specific relationships through which they are designed and used. Five device case studies from the USA, India and Sierra Leone examine the partnerships between donors, governments, NGOs and users that characterise technology-driven models of global health, the integration of devices with health infrastructures in target settings, and the practices of knowledge production and use that they entail. It will generate a comparative and context-specific framework for understanding how institutional relationships shape diagnostic devices and how diagnostic devices are transforming health systems. In doing so it will make a major contribution to understandings of interactions between humanitarian, governance and corporate agendas in global health, and their implications for health systems in resource-poor settings. Through innovative collaborative methods it will also develop a set of ‘health system strengthening tools’ that will enable stakeholders to improve the design and use of devices in dialogue with project findings.