Web-based Medical Equipment Management System in Seven Referral Hospitals
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Date
2018-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Medical devices are an integral part of healthcare service delivery and they are used for monitoring,
diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of patients. Proper utilization of medical devices is
important for ensuring the safety of users and patients, reducing downtime, improving the quality
of health services and increasing the benefit of financial investment.
The aim of this study was to assess the utilization of medical devices and to develop web-based
medical equipment management system. Both quantitative and qualitative data has been collected
for the study. The data collection was conducted between August 26, 2017 to September 20, 2017
in all the seven government owned teaching hospitals which are found in Addis Ababa and
Hawassa cities. On average, each hospital delivered services for more than 3 million populations,
and had more than 17 service standards, 330 medical equipment and 500 beds during the research
period. Data were collected by observation of available resources, interviewing selected
professionals about their services and also through questionnaire which was filled by biomedical
engineers and biomedical technicians who assessed the utilization phase of healthcare technology
management in the seven hospitals.
According to the data collected, more than half (17/31) of the respondents did not know the exact
number of medical equipment in their facility and there were only 29% (2/7) of hospitals which
had recommended test equipment and workshop space in their facilities and almost all hospitals
did not have international standards and guidelines and also service manuals. The percentage of
respondents who didn’t agree on the availability of reference materials, electrical safety and
performance test equipment, sufficient user and maintainer training, sufficient maintenance staff,
preventive maintenance schedule for all medical equipment were 74%, 77%, 65%, 54% and 36%
respectively.
In order to better manage medical devices, we have designed and developed an automated medical
equipment management system that can be deployed in a hospital. The system is developed using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. We strongly believe that such automated system
helps to improve communication between system users, decrease resilience on human role, reduce
data redundancy, allow multiple users to access the data, enhance the security of the equipment,
improve planning and budgeting for medical equipment.
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Keywords
Healthcare technology management, web-based technology, automated system, medical device, medical equipment management system