Oxygen CoLab’s next chapter begins
With continued support from the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, the Oxygen CoLab is bringing together product development, service model innovation and advocacy to deliver on the promise of oxygen concentrators in low-resource settings.
For the next two years we will be collaborating and experimenting to deliver on the promise of oxygen concentrators to expand access to low-resource settings.
Since its formation in 2020, the CoLab has been exploring the conundrum of why the potential of oxygen concentrators has yet to be effectively realised in low-resource settings across the world, despite the ongoing work from global partners to implement them and the existing evidence that shows them to be effective and economical sources of oxygen.
Our work over the past three years has allowed us to both understand the challenges in making oxygen accessible, reliable and affordable for patients at the lower-levels of healthcare; and to begin incubating a set of innovative solutions to these challenges.
After 100+ conversations with oxygen experts in 2021, we learnt that even if making better oxygen concentrators for lower-and-middle-income-countries was a no-brainer, the challenge was one far from just engineering. It’s not as simple as inventing a new technological solution, because of the concurrent ecosystem deficiencies.
“I’m delighted about the launch of the Oxygen CoLab Phase 2. Together with partners, we hope this next phase of the programme can make a significant impact for patients needing life-saving oxygen in low-resource settings. Oxygen-as-a-service has the potential to provide more affordable, easier to use oxygen provision that is technically and commercially sustainable. Along with the work on oxygen-as-a-service, we have two lines of research and development, which aim to adapt existing Global North products to be fit for low-resource settings, and support the exploration of new and potentially disruptive technologies. This is all within the collaboration that the CoLab fosters in everything it does — and for which we invite all interested parties to engage.”
- Phil Outram, Technology and Innovation Advisor, UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Senior Responsible Officer Oxygen CoLab
Today, to realise the full potential of oxygen concentrators, we are investing in not only improving products for low-resource settings, but also in developing wrap-around service models which keep concentrators working in health facilities, and helping governments and companies adopt these models effectively. Ultimately our aim is to increase access to oxygen for patients in low-resource settings. (To read more about the history of the CoLab take a look at this post.)
This post marks the beginning of the next stage in the CoLab’s journey, a phase which we are proud and excited to say will be its most ambitious and impactful to date.
Over the next two years we will be scaling up our ‘learning by doing’ approach in these three ways…
1. Innovating products for low-resource settings
In this next phase we will be investing in technologists and manufacturers to research, develop and lab test oxygen concentrators that are fit-for-purpose in low-resource settings, both now and in the future.
We are thrilled to be supporting two manufactures (Drive DeVilbiss and Kröber Medizintechnik) with research and development grants to innovate their products. Their aim is to make them reach UNICEF’s Target Product Profile (TPP) in time for the Advanced Purchase Commitment led by UNICEF in 2024. We are also soon to invest in early stage product innovators with strong prototypes that are, by design, also fit-for-purpose in low-resource settings.
To complement our R&D efforts, we will be funding the lab testing of products that could, in the future, be fit-for-purpose in low-resource settings. We will fund a range of products being manufactured across the world including a range of the most promising new ones, to help us understand what manufacturers will need to improve going forward. The insights from this lab testing will be shared across the sector with the aim of advising large donors, global health partners and governments on future purchases of oxygen equipment.
➡️ Read more about our product innovation here.
2. Oxygen-as-a-Service
We know that improving products alone will not increase access to oxygen in low-resource contexts: machines break or may be used incorrectly. Alongside product innovation, we also need to invest in new service models that can help us break the equipment graveyard cycles.
Through a portfolio of on-the-ground pilots we are testing Oxygen-as-a-Service models that allow health facilities to pay vendors for oxygen availability and outcomes, not just equipment.
Oxygen-as-a-Service allows governments and facilities to pay for oxygen as they would electricity or water (i.e. as a reliable utility). The models we are testing aim to reduce the amount of concentrator maintenance needed whilst increasing the capacity of healthcare workers to use them. We hope that this means they are more able to focus on delivering quality healthcare at the right time, to those that need it most.
The services-based model goes far beyond just the sale of equipment by integrating essential (and currently absent) services such as maintenance, training and technical support. In doing so, this approach overcomes many of the limitations of traditional purchasing (upfront cost, unpredictable expenses, skills gaps, etc) and carries immense potential for closing oxygen access gaps and preventing unnecessary deaths in low resource settings.
Alongside funding oxygen-as-a-service pilots, we are also supporting them to grow across health centres, regions and countries. Making this happen requires them to have a business model that works and is commercially viable. The Oxygen CoLab is providing hands-on support to give these organisations the best chance possible of continuing to deliver and grow their services beyond the lifecycle of this programme.
➡️ Read more about Oxygen-as-a-Service and our pilots here.
3. Putting evidence into action
Even if we have both the pieces above nailed, the route to global impact is more complex than just bottom-up scaling. In order to unlock scale for these organisations, national and global policy makers will need to invest money and attention to the role of oxygen concentrators in LMICs, i.e. validating their use. They will need to buy them, and they need to provide guidelines and policies that will encourage their use at lower levels of healthcare. If not, our organisations won’t get any traction in selling O2aaS in the healthcare settings where they are needed most.
We will support this primarily by collecting evidence about where and how oxygen concentrators can be used. Our aim is to ensure that governments can access and use this evidence to inform their spending on oxygen infrastructure.
We also have ambitions to take part in high level global conversations about oxygen roadmaps, being led by the World Health Organisation. These are the plans that many countries have committed to creating in the next few years that will chart their journey to a more equitable and sustainable oxygen ecosystem. We will want to make sure countries know about the potential of concentrators when they develop their oxygen roadmaps.
➡️ Read more about how we’re putting evidence into action here.
Reaching systems change through working with others
The Oxygen CoLab has always been just that, a combination of Co (collaboration) and Lab (testing and learning) all of which is not possible without the support of friends, allies, collaborators and more.
If you are reading this then it’s likely you are an oxygen innovator yourself, a manufacturer of health products, a policy maker, a health technical expert, an international funder, or an investor in the health technology space.
We are looking for CoLabbers that can:
- Help our pilots continue to test and scale their services
- Get our evidence out to the right places
- Share about any product innovation we should know about
- Advise us on where and how we achieve our mission
If any of this resonates with you then please do get in touch with us at oxygen@makingbetterfutures.org.
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