The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has ushered us into a new era of global public health urgency, with diagnostics and laboratory medicine at its centre.1 To take advantage of this focus on diagnostics to leapfrog some of the barriers in low- and middle-income countries, we must first understand what is feasible and effective in our setting. This African Journal of Laboratory Medicine’s special issue on the ‘Future of Diagnostics’ offers us the opportunity to examine innovations in diagnostics that are already afoot in Africa. These innovations cover all three phases of testing and include a discussion of open (rather than closed) reagent systems for molecular testing, a tool for assessing the diagnostic capacity of a country, Nigeria’s experience establishing laboratory networks, tuberculosis data analytics, and mobile testing, reporting and surveillance – among others.
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