THE IN SITU LABORATORY INITIATIVE

Building local capacity to monitor wildlife health and biodiversity globally

Decentralized and Community Driven

Democratizing Laboratories

The In Situ Lab Initiative has a democratic architecture that is based on a network of hubs. Each hub is a node in a network of decentralised laboratories, and consists of hubs connected upwards to urban established laboratories, and downwards to satellite or mobile laboratories. Together, the network dramatically increases the availability of laboratory services targeted to wildlife and the environment, in a particular region.

What makes a good laboratory hub?

ISL Initiative hubs are/will be located anywhere from remote field stations without road access or electricity, to a town without without prior laboratory access, but established energy and infrastructure supplies. All of them however, have to consider several factors to ensure smooth operability and equitable access. A good hub needs:

Secure infrastructure with the potential for establishing sterile workspace.
Equitable access to the hub including affordability.
Adequate energy supply to the hub, with a preference for sustainable energy sources.
Appropriate biohazard disposal pipelines.
An emphasis on plastic reduction.
Proximity to sample collection to increase collection scale and reduce time to preservation per sample.
A data tracking system to efficiently record the path taken for each sample from collection to sequencing.
A community-based approach with regional partners as primary leaders for each hub.

The Well Planned Hub

comes equipped with significant advantages

Adding or upgrading laboratory space can radically expand opportunities to study, record, describe and analyze information locked into biosamples. Bringing a laboratory to a geographic location where there has never been a laboratory can also impact local communities.