ALFC Double Feature - Making Lateral Flow Accessible Everywhere

ALFC Double Feature - Making Lateral Flow Accessible Everywhere

From Life Science Marketing Radio by Chris Conner

November 19, 2025 · 29 min

About this episode

This episode discusses the challenges of usability in lateral flow testing and features insights from John Kelly of Atomo Diagnostics.

This episode is a double from my visit to the Advanced Lateral Flow Conference . Usability is Innovation: Atomo Diagnostics Atomo Diagnostics set out more than a decade ago to solve a surprisingly human problem in diagnostics: complexity. Founder John Kelly describes how even the best rapid tests—validated in pristine lab environments—often fail when they reach the real world, where people have no training, and shaky instructions. That gap between laboratory precision and real-world usability has huge implications for reliability, trust, and ultimately regulatory approval. Atomo’s core insight is simple: most errors in point-of-care testing aren’t biological—they’re behavioral. The accessories people use in the field (cheap pipettes, dropper bottles, uncalibrated parts) invite mistakes, and the more steps required, the higher the failure rate. Kelly and his team approached the problem the way a designer might: observe how real users behave, then engineer around human nature instead of fighting it. To validate their approach, they went straight to the source—literally to the community—conducting studies in Africa with low-literacy users who received only picture-based…

People in this episode

Host: Chris Conner

Guest: John Kelly

Topics covered

  • lateral flow testing
  • usability in diagnostics
  • point-of-care testing
  • behavioral errors
  • design innovation

Keywords

  • lateral flow
  • diagnostics
  • usability
  • point-of-care
  • Atomo Diagnostics
  • behavioral errors
  • design

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Atomo Diagnostics

Places: Africa

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