Advancing Community-Driven Do-It-Yourself Solutions for Scientific Lab Equipment in the Developing World: The Tekla Labs Model

Access to standard lab equipment is a serious limitation to scientific education, research and capacity building in many parts of the world. Even in typically resource-rich environments such as the United States limited funding has left many research, medical and educational labs without necessary equipment.  Traditional efforts to increase the availability of supplies in resource-limited labs are based on donation programs shipping used equipment to the target lab. The need for high quality lab equipment far exceeds the donated supply. In addition, the model for lab equipment donation has solved neither the problems of equipment electrical compatibility, nor the high cost of transporting equipment on a piecewise basis. We hypothesize that providing blueprints for do-it-yourself (DIY) laboratory equipment in an interactive, on-line community will offer a desirable low-cost solution to expensive commercially manufactured biological lab equipment. The methods involved to address the hypothesis in this study consist of three distinct, yet complementary approaches: survey research lab interest, obtain community support, and create DIY instructions. To address research lab interest, initial surveys were collected from 19 labs in North Africa, Latin America and South America to assess equipment need and interest in novel DIY solutions. Local community support was encouraged and tested in several distinct forums. A website, teklalabs.org, was created to host the DIY blueprints and updates on Tekla Labs. Finally, two pieces of desired lab equipment were selected as goals, and high quality DIY solutions were created. Of the labs that expressed need for a given item, 44% replied to the survey that they would build at least one piece of equipment in-house if given easy to follow instructions, and a full 60% of labs said they would purchase such DIY-constructed equipment locally from a university-affiliated or independent materials shop. Interest in building or buying locally produced equipment was high even with the respondents who already owned the listed equipment. Local community support has been demonstrated in many ways, including winning a Berkeley Big Ideas Grant, unsolicited volunteers providing DIY solutions, participation in local community events including winning the Education Award at the San Francisco Maker Faire, and press support in Physics Today and the Sustainable Science Institute newsletter. The website has demonstrated success through numerous unsolicited visits and subscriptions to mailing list. DIY instruction documentation is successful with two DIY instructions completed and four more in preparation. The work on this project demonstrates that creating high quality and clearly documented DIY solutions to laboratory equipment is feasible. The local and international community is supportive and involved in the effort. DIY equipment is a sustainable solution to advancing science in a resource-limited environment.