Research Domain: Health

The ICFI health domain is a research hub working and teaching on improved understanding of how frugal innovations can improve access to health care for marginalized communities. 

The Leiden-Delft-Erasmus universities are strong in the health domain and have through the years built several scientific powerhouses around it: the Medical Delta was established, next to the LUMC and Erasmus MC.

ICFI takes on a complementary position within the above landscape: health & frugal innovation. We aim to contribute to bridge the gap between hard-to-reach populations and health care services. We believe that frugal innovations can help bridge this gap. We do this by focusing on multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and education regarding health applications and tools.

ICFI's Approach to Health & Frugal Innovation

Below we have identified elements of our approach to health & frugal innovation. Not all our research & projects will and can contain all the elements below, but these elements are ICFI's compass in the Health Domain. 

  • At ICFI we apply a process approach with a focus on avoiding over-engineering.
  • At ICFI we use a bottom-up and co-creation approach
  • At ICFI we aim to contribute to a decolonialized version of the field of reverse innovation.
  • At ICFI we move beyond diagnostics. 
  • At ICFI we focus on localized primary and community health care
  • At ICFI we identify health interventions with scaling potential
  • At ICFI we explore ‘fit for purpose’ digitalization in bottom-up health interventions
  • At ICFI we support the development of frugal innovations within LDE faculties

Read more about these 9 typical elements in the ICFI health niche

Health Team and Partners

Our researchers and partners within ICFI's health domain are multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary. This means that on the one hand we are working together with researchers based at several recognized research institutions such as the LUMC, NeLL, ASCL and the TU Delft faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. On the other hand we engage and reach out to other actor networks and investigate whether we can cooperate with e.g. ministries of foreign affairs and industry partners on health related types of issues.