Rethinking Medical Innovation from the Ground Up
Building locally, thinking globally: developing scalable, context-driven healthcare technologies
About Us
The International Institute for Accessible Technology (IIAT) was founded in Geneva in 2025 with a single guiding question:
What would healthcare innovation look like if it started with those most often left out of it?
We work to design and deploy affordable medical technologies for low-resource settings — not as charity, but as co-created solutions built with local engineers, researchers, and healthcare workers. By embedding development within local institutions, we aim to create systems that can support long-term, self-sustaining healthcare innovation.
Our flagship project, a phototherapy unit for neonatal jaundice, is currently being piloted in the Republic of the Congo, in partnership with Marien Ngouabi University and the Congolese Foundation for Medical Research (FCRM).
Building on this foundation, we are expanding into new applications — including exploration of low-cost diagnostic technologies in East Africa — with the goal of developing a broader portfolio of accessible medical devices.
Collaborative Innovation
We believe that accessible design is not just a technical principle — it’s a structural one. Every system we develop is shaped through dialogue: across disciplines, institutions, and borders. We prioritise local production, repair, and ownership to ensure that innovation is sustainable and rooted in context.
Our Mission
To empower communities with accessible, locally driven medical technologies and to build the systems needed for sustainable, context-based healthcare innovation.
Our Vision
A world where every community — no matter how remote — has the tools and knowledge to meet its own healthcare needs with dignity and autonomy.
We aim to contribute to this by enabling distributed, locally driven systems of medical innovation that can scale across technologies and regions.
Core Values
Accessibility — We design for inclusion and real-world usability
Adaptability — We build systems that evolve with context and need
Equity — We measure success by long-term impact, not short-term output
