Motic China Group Partners With Global Good Fund

Advanced microscope designer and manufacturer Motic China Group Co. Ltd. has partnered with the Global Good Fund, a collaboration between Intellectual Ventures and Bill Gates, to develop technologies for humanitarian impact.

The collaboration will create and distribute the EasyScan GO, a breakthrough, artificial intelligence-powered microscope to fight the spread of drug-resistant malaria and assist in case management. Using custom image recognition software, EasyScan GO is capable of identifying and counting malaria parasites in a blood smear in as little as 20 minutes.

“This collaboration, combining Global Good’s impact invention focus with Motic’s engineering, manufacturing and distribution capabilities, represents the type of innovative health care solution that is needed to improve health in emerging and low-income markets,” said Maurizio Vecchione, executive vice president of Global Good and research. “By distributing and commercializing an intelligent microscope, Global Good and Motic are creating a future where quality diagnosis of multiple diseases is within reach for everyone everywhere.”

Every year, malaria kills almost half a million people, and researchers estimate nearly half the world’s population is at risk of contracting it. The rapid spread of a multidrug-resistant strain in parts of Southeast Asia is a particularly alarming development.

“Malaria is one of the hardest diseases to identify on a microscope slide,” said David Bell, director of global health technologies supporting Global Good. “By putting machine learning-enabled microscopes in the hands of laboratory technicians, we can overcome two major barriers to combating the mutating parasite — improving diagnosis in case management and standardizing detection across geographies and time.”

Global Good is dedicated to inventing technology for humanitarian impact. Millions of people suffer and die each year in poor countries from causes that humanity has the scientific and technical ability to solve. Funded by Bill Gates and focused on a shared vision with Nathan Myhrvold, Global Good invents technology to solve some of humanity's most daunting problems. Motic is a manufacturer of conventional compound microscopes.

“Our goal in integrating Global Good’s advanced software into Motic’s high-quality, affordable digital slide scanner is to simplify and standardize malaria detection,” said Richard Yeung, vice president of Motic China. “Success with the most-difficult-to-identify disease paves the way for the EasyScan product line to excel at almost any microscopy task and to detect other major diseases that affect developed and emerging markets alike.”