Development and on-site implementation and user training of a simple Health Technology Management System in a low-resource setting

Health Technology Management (HTM) is also called "Clinical Engineering", it is a sub-area of biomedical engineering and includes all the activities necessary to ensure the continuous and long-lasting functionality of a hospital’s medical equipment, aiming also to a cost reduction. A powerful HTM must be context sensitive, and the considered setting is the St. Luke Hospital of Wolisso in Ethiopia. This thesis wants to describe the activities carried out with the final aim of developing a simple HTM system, that would to be implemented in St. Luke hospital in Wolisso . The system should be designed to ensure its replicability in similar, but not identical contexts. Several aspects must be considered in developing a system like this, starting with the creation of a team. Then it is possible to move towards the establishment of an inventory, the management of processes of maintenance (corrective and preventive), the procedure for installation and disposal of medical equipment and the draw up of purchase plan. A project like this must be guided in its entirety by the thought "fall in love with the problem and not with the solution". Given this concept, during the whole course the "Biodesign process" was followed. Taking advantage of the features of a Microsoft Product ® such as SharePoint, we tried to implement a digital HTM system, exploiting the technologies present at St. Luke hospital like a laptop and a tablet with internet connection, but keeping some documents on paper. The implementation of all the above mentioned aspects of a simple HTM system has been successfully completed and with great satisfaction in having accepted all the requests of the Ethiopian co-workers. The team can be satisfied with the completion of the project, but it is not possible to stop working with St. Luke hospital aware of the positive impacts such as extending the life of a medical device by reducing downtime, that an effective HTM system brings.