Browsing by Author "Tadesse, Minalku"

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    Decision Support System for Medical Equipment Standardization
    (Addis Ababa University, 2020-06) Tadesse, Minalku; Masreshaw, Demelash (PhD); Mengistu, Kifle (PhD) Co-Advisor
    Introduction: Healthcare technology in general and medical equipment in particular is vital for the healthcare provision. However, today’s medical equipment market competition paved a way for existence of lack of Medical Equipment Standardization (MES) in hospitals. Consequently, decision making in MES and managing of medical equipment appropriateness become complex practices. Similarly, although the exact problem in Ethiopia is not yet known, only 72% and 50% of medical equipment in Addis Ababa and regional public hospitals respectively are functional which raise equipment appropriateness issues. Moreover, my field observation helped me see professionals who complained about lack of MES. But no attention is given in Ethiopia, and evidences around investigating the needs, challenges, practices and requirements in MES decision making process are limited. So this research aims to investigate the impact of lack of MES in equipment appropriateness and develop a novel decision support system for MES decision making process. Methodology: Mixed study was applied. For this survey, 457 health professionals from 5 Federal hospitals and 6 hospitals from Addis Ababa Health Bureau participated during survey between March and April 2018. To strength this, 4 biomedical engineers (1 EFDA, 3 EPSA) were also interviewed. To analyze the collected data Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 23 was used. Input-output (IO) approach and sequential water fall model was used to organize and develop the system respectively. Requirements were assessed and validated before the system was developed. Then C-sharp and SQL were used as a programming language. At the end, this novel system was simulated using analytical model and tested using hypothetical values. Results and Conclusions: Descriptive test result of survey indicated that lack of medical equipment standardization has an impact on medical equipment appropriateness. The cross-tabulation test also supports this and on average more than 257 (72.3%) participants agreed on lack of MES existence and its impact on equipment appropriateness. Similarly, chi-square test result also indicated that, there is a statistically significant relationship between existence of lack of MES and its impact on medical equipment appropriateness. Our findings are in agreement with the WHO findings which stated that 30-50% of world economy is wasted by extra spare part and maintenance requirement resulted from lack of MES. In addition based on survey result, physicians’ preference, manager-supplier relationship, public procurement law, negative attitude, lack of communication and collaboration are major challenges in MES. Moreover, 337 (94.7%) participants reported they have no system for MES standardization has an impact on equipment appropriateness and supports the need of a new system that facilitates MES decision making process. The overall survey result indicated that lack of medical equipment standardization has an impact on equipment appropriateness and supports the need of a new system that facilitates MES decision making process. Following this, a novel system was developed and tested. The system output can support decision makers in MES decision making process.