Health Ministry receives project presentation from ECRI Institute
The Ministry of Health (MOH) on Monday received a project presentation from ECRI Institute, a US based nonprofit organisation on strengthening the equipment management system of health institutions within the country.
The project is to help generate policy guidelines for the management of technology equipment to enhance effective health service delivery in various health institutions.
Mr Joseph Adomako, Director of Administration, Ghana Health Service, said effective service delivery in the health sector was being hindered by non-functioning medical equipment, adding “Ghanaians are guilty of poor maintenance culture”
Mr Adomako said the project was welcome news to the country as it would provide expert advice on how to properly keep equipment in the various hospitals.
According to him, the Ministry would continue to corporate with notable institutions like the ECRIC Institute to ensure that the core objectives of the Ministry were achieved.
He called on Ghanaians to adopt a maintenance culture to improve growth in all sectors since such equipment were very expensive to purchase.
Presenting the project, Dr Joel Nobel, Founder and President of ECRI Institute, said the project was to help improve the nation’s ability to deal with the complexity and costs of healthcare technology such as devices, equipment, related information systems and software among others.
According to him, the project also aimed to meet the related challenges of patient and staff safety as well as sensitise physicians, nurses and technicians to patient safety issues.
He stated the need to provide computerised maintenance management system for inventory and cost control, work scheduling and devices history in health institutions.
Dr Noel, among other things, proposed for technology device regulation in the country with a focus on supplier and product registration and post-market surveillance.
ECRI Institute, for more than 40 years, has been dedicated to bringing the discipline of applied scientific research to discover which medical procedures, devices, drugs, and processes are best to improve patient care.
ECRI Institute is one of the few organizations designated as both a Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization and an Evidence-Based Practice Center by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Source: GNA