Baobab Health frequently hosts volunteers in Malawi. Baobab focuses on
creating touchscreen based decision support tools as well as open source
tools for interfacing with lab equipment (especially pediatric and HIV
focused equipment).
Which reminds me, does anybody on this list have any experience getting
electronic CD4 results out of an EPICS CD4 count machine?
Mike McKay
www.baobabhealth.org
Thanks for your input. It also gives me the opportunity to thank Jennifer. Your respective experiences sound like many others in developing countries, especially in Africa.
I would like to add on the description you provided on the “disease” and causes for the poor recognition and acceptance of HTM and CE in the health system. Particularly, [...]
Calil
Our discussions are aimed at empowering African HTM professionals through the creation of national professional associations “appropriate” training=
institutions and other continuous professional development initiatives.
I would be interested in being associated to the project with some other
fellow African professionals I would recommend. The participation of some African professionals in this project would help cover [...]
Dear Andre
IFMBE and ORBIS are organizing a joint project to train people in Africa. The project will have his first trial in Ethiopia.
Is there any result from this discussion you mention? If so, please tell us since It may be quite useful for our planning
All the best
Saide Jorge Calil
Saide Jorge Calil – M.Sc.;Ph.D
Departamento de Engenharia [...]
Dear All,
Thank you for a week of great discussions. It seems appropriate for me (as
Non-Official Moderator!) at this point to make an observation from the
discussions.
The concept of “appropriateness” is indeed powerful and I think it applies
to practically all domains of human endeavour; only that different words are
used to express the same concept.
Björne’s [...]
Colleagues,
Coming in late in this discussion, I’m not sure of the original issue…
I agree with Ronald’s concluding statement. For the purpose of WHO’s
agreements, WHO bases its definition of developing country on the UN
classification. But a visit to the UN website reveals the alphabet soup of
LLDC, LDC and so-on to which Ronald refers. Perhaps it is [...]
Michael
Many valuable points have been made. One of most important things will be to
identify a pro-active “Champion” in the recipient hospital/MOH/organisation
and to develop a realistic and sustainable plan based on the local needs and
priorities and taking into account the local human and infrastructure
resources. Ismael gives a useful example of developing a good local [...]
Dear Ismael
I was just typing some questions and you just jump ahead with the answers
about working with government hospitals or government organizations.
My experience is that it does not work, mainly due to politics, or shall I
say, developing countries polices and politics.
Your experience is what we did here with Clinical Engineering and it is
working.
Around 1993, Hospitals [...]
Dear Michael:
MypProposed generic strategy for NGOs wanting to help improve healthcare
technology in developing countries (5 year project):
1. Concentrate efforts on one single medium-to-large government or NGO
hospital with a poor record of equipment condition and utilization, but
with a strong leadership committed to improvement in this area and to
sharing its lessons learned.
2. Measure all pre-project indicators [...]
Greetings Michael and others following the discussion on inoperative medical devices in developing countries.
I will join the discussion by providing information on the basic medical equipment training (MET) program International Aid began in 1998 after reading material similar to and perhaps including your articles from 1994 and 1995. Our MET program began with the focus [...]
The issue of root causes is important. One of the problems that I have
seen is that while the reports are usually good and comprehensive,
covering the whole HTM, they end up becoming good documents for quoting
HTM status in a particular region or country. Due to shortage of local
human resources these documents seem overwhelming for implementation.
Therefore, one [...]
I would like to make some points about 50%:
In developing countries still do not have an inventory techniques, which
help match fitness equipment. Only we have administrative inventories.
The areas where clinics that 50% is most evident is in the laboratory and
Microbiology. Lack of reagents.
The areas of care, intensive care, are more active to keep their computers
running.
We [...]
