Advancing Safe Surgery for Children: Kids Operating Room and Arclight
University of St Andrews School of Medicine and Kids Operating Room
Kids Operating Room is a global health charity dedicated to ensuring every child can access safe surgery. In many low and middle-income countries, hospitals lack the specialised paediatric operating rooms, equipment, and trained staff needed to provide essential surgical care.
To close this gap, Kids Operating Room designs, equips, and installs fully fitted paediatric operating rooms, while also supporting the training and development of local surgical teams. This approach strengthens health systems and enables hospitals to deliver life-saving procedures to children who would otherwise go untreated.
The charity works in some of the world’s most challenging settings, including conflict‑affected and fragile health systems. It has already installed six paediatric operating rooms in Ukraine and is preparing new projects in South Sudan and the West Bank, expanding access to safe surgery where it is needed most.
Every Kids Operating Room installation is built to be sustainable, high‑quality, and fit for purpose, ensuring clinicians have the tools they need to safely assess and treat paediatric patients.
How the St Andrews Arclight Supports the Kids Operating Room Mission
The Arclight Ophthalmoscope‑Loupe‑Otoscope, developed by the University of St Andrews Medical Innovations, is a compact, low-cost diagnostic tool designed for low‑resource settings. Combining three traditional diagnosis instruments into one portable device, it gives clinicians essential eye and ear examination capabilities where conventional equipment is often unavailable.
Kids Operating Room will now include two Arclight units in every operating room installation, boosting diagnostic capacity across the paediatric surgical pathway, from pre‑operative assessment to ward rounds, emergency care, and post‑operative monitoring.
With solar charging, robust construction, and easy portability, Arclight is particularly well suited to the hospitals where Kids Operating Room works, including facilities with limited infrastructure or unreliable electricity. Its reliability ensures clinicians can continue delivering high‑quality care even in remote or conflict‑affected environments.
A New Link Between Kids Operating Room and the University of St Andrews School of Medicine
With the adoption of Arclight as a standard component of Kids Operating Room equipment packages, the charity and the University of St Andrews are now formally connected through a shared mission: improving access to high‑quality paediatric care in underserved regions. Arclight’s inclusion across all Kids Operating Room installations means that every new operating room now incorporates technology developed at the University, embedding world‑leading diagnostic innovation directly into surgical environments worldwide.
This partnership strengthens the impact of both organisations. Kids Operating Room benefits from a reliable, evidence‑based diagnostic tool specifically designed for low‑resource settings, while the University of St Andrews sees its innovation deployed at global scale, supporting thousands of clinicians and enhancing care pathways for children in hospitals across Africa, Asia, and beyond.
Enabling Better Care for Children
By integrating Arclight devices into its equipment packages, Kids Operating Room enhances the ability of surgical teams to diagnose, assess, and monitor paediatric patients effectively. This contributes to safer clinical decision-making, improved training opportunities for local healthcare professionals, and stronger surgical systems overall.
Together, Kids Operating Room and Arclight demonstrate how innovative technology and targeted investment in healthcare infrastructure can expand access to safe surgery and improve outcomes for children in some of the world’s most underserved communities.