GSSHealth Showcases Solar-Powered Diagnostics at BioPREVAIL Built Environment Design Challenge

The Problem: Power Outages Compromise Diagnostics and Biosecurity

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Power outages and unstable electricity supplies are a persistent challenge for laboratories worldwide, particularly in rural and remote settings. Interruptions compromise the availability of biosafety supplies, disrupt laboratory instruments, and damage samples and reagents. The consequences extend beyond inconvenience—Every power outage narrows the window for disease detection and control.

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GSSHealth founder and CEO Dr. Paula Fernandes has witnessed these challenges firsthand over 21 years of work in resource-limited settings.

During the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, Dr. Fernandes worked with UNICEF Supply Division to support over 40 Community Care Centers across the country. None of those centers had reliable power. Staff could not charge phones to report data from the field, compromising decisions about personal protective equipment distribution and patient placement. Then, during a 2019 assessment of a wastewater sequencing lab at Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital in Nigeria, Dr. Fernandes observed that even major referral hospitals face unstable power.

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With 19 years of experience in international health system strengthening, Mr. Shadrack Were has also seen first-hand the impact of unreliable power on health service delivery. In recent projects supporting clinical laboratories in Kenya and Sierra Leone, he observed how even brief power outages can compromise diagnostic workflows, forcing staff to restart tests, discard compromised samples, and explain delays to patients and clinicians awaiting results.

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“Reliable power is not a support function for biosecurity. It is a requirement,” says Mr. Were. “Without it, access control fails, security systems go offline, and secure operations cannot be maintained.”

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The Solution: Solar-Powered Diagnostic Systems

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GSSHealth conducted a proof-of-concept test pairing a commercial solar power system with a GeneXpert diagnostic device. GeneXpert is designed for use at lower levels of the health system, but power supply limitations often prevent its deployment in the communities that need it most.

The project tested a simple question: can solar power enable point-of-care testing so patients with tuberculosis symptoms can be tested and treated on site rather than waiting for samples to travel to referral laboratories?

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The team deployed the system at two rural health centers. Results were promising. The GeneXpert instrument operated continuously for up to nine hours per day. In one day, the team tested 83 samples for tuberculosis and antimicrobial resistance, achieving 100% concordance with referral lab results. End user feedback was highly positive, with the regional healthcare manager expressing interest in expanding the system to other sites.

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The Path Forward: Lessons from the Field

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The results were promising, but the field exposed the limits of off-the-shelf solutions. Solar panels need security features to prevent theft. Lithium-ion batteries face supply chain obstacles in remote regions. Current designs do not allow for easy maintenance or component replacement. The next generation of solar-powered diagnostics will need to be built for the environments where they will actually be used, with modular parts, longer cables, and monitoring systems that flag problems early.

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GSSHealth’s proof-of-concept showed that solar-powered diagnostics can deliver reliable results in settings without stable electricity, bringing faster diagnosis and treatment to patients in remote areas. With continued development, these systems could strengthen global biosecurity by ensuring laboratories remain operational regardless of power infrastructure.