Open-source medical devices: Healthcare solutions for low-, middle-, and high-resource settings

Open-source and collaborative design of medical devices has the potential to increase the access to medical technologies, thanks to a feasible reduction in design, management, maintenance, and repair costs, due to the open access to device blueprints. To be truly transformative and have a real impact on the medical industry and healthcare systems, open-source medical devices (OSMDs) and their boundaries should be adequately defined. In this chapter, a reasoned definition of OSMD is proposed, and the underlying enabling technologies and supporting practices are provided.