Jose Gomez-Marquez


José Gomez-Marquez is a Honduran inventor, researcher, and educator and is best known for empowering medical professionals with MEDIkits. He currently serves on the European Union's Science Against Poverty Initiative Task Force. He's dedicated to changing global health and advocates for healthcare professionals.

Early life and education

Before entering the United States, Gomez-Marquez was a native of Honduras. He is from a medical family, his grandfather was a surgeon who served in different hospitals in Tegucigalpa where Gomez was raised. Gomes-Marquez observed the impact medical devices could have for improving access to healthcare after spending a childhood with frequent doctor visits due to health concerns related to his premature birth. After entering the United States on a Rotary scholarship in 1997, Marquez attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where he studied policy research covering international technology, transfer and small-team innovation.

Career and research

Jose Gomez-Marquez observed inventive behaviors during his time in Nicaragua when hospital staff utilized unconventional materials such as cut-up soda bottles as drainage valves and layered surgical gauze, to create neonatal UV protectors. These experiences inspired his mission to empower inventiveness and access to tools in impoverished communities. Gomez-Marquez developed a way to extract parts from toys and use these to build medical instruments for children at low cost. He also designed a way for people to build their own diagnostic devices that can be put together inexpensively. The cofounder of the International Development Initiation at MIT, Amy B. Smith, hired him in 2007 to run Innovations in International Health. Marquez is currently the co-director of Little Devices Lab at MIT, a research group focused on developing affordable medical device hardware, increasing accessibility, and empowering frontline healthcare providers to design medical technologies. Jose is the creator of the first course on affordable medical device hardware at MIT. He is one of the cofounders of MakerNurse, a community of inventive nurses creating solutions to improve patient care, established in 2013. He is also cofounder of LDTC+ Labs, and serves on the European Union's Science Against Poverty Initiative Task Force. One of his many inventions that won him awards are individual vaporizers that come already filled with the appropriate amount of vaccine. These vaccines didn't need to be refrigerated and could be disposed of right after usage.

Awards and honors

Gomez-Marquez is a three-time MIT IDEAS Competition winner including two Lemelson Awards for International Technology. In 2009, he was named the Technology Review Humanitarian of the year and MIT Technology Review added him to the TR35 list of innovators under 35. In 2011, Gomez-Marquez was chosen as a TedGlobal Fellow. He won these awards for his designs of inexpensive practical medical devices for use in countries without the necessary monetary means to provide similar devices.

Selected publications