Lack of standardisation of medical devices in Ghana said to be detrimental to patient diagnosis

Mr Emmanuel Kenney Teye, Chief Executive Officer of Flokefama, says lack of standardisation of medical devices can be detrimental to patient diagnosis in healthcare delivery in Ghana.

He said the lack of standardization of medical devices could make medical facilities produce bad results, which could compel medical doctors to make wrong diagnoses.

Mr Teye was speaking to the media on the sidelines of Flokefama’s conference with Chief Executive Officers of Hospitals in Ghana about trends in laboratories in Accra.

The Conference was on the theme: “Sustainable Healthcare System: Contribution of quality laboratory diagnosis.”

This failure, he said, could compel doctors to make wrong decisions which would be detrimental to the health of the patient.

“It is important that the laboratory adopt standardisation, precision, and control on medical devices across medical centers and if they fail to have standardisation, we will have a problem churning out laboratory results,” he added.

He, therefore, called for standardisation, precision, and control of medical devices to produce the best test result for patients so that doctors could make informed decisions.

Mr. Teye urged the relevant stakeholders, particularly Parliament and the Food and Drugs Authority to review the existing regulatory framework for medical devices.

He cautioned the public to desist from buying personalized test kits and ensure that the kits purchase from facilities were registered with the Food and Drugs Authority.

 Dr. Henry Huang, Chief Medical Officer for Mindray in North America, welcomed the idea of establishing a medical trial Center in Africa, particularly in Ghana.

He said clinical trials conducted on the global fronts often ignored and forgot minorities, particularly Africans to produce reliable results.

The results of such trials often lead to bias to the West as the health peculiarities of the minorities are not considered and not included.

“So, we have to recruit different populations, including minorities, different ethnicities in clinical trials so we can get reliable results to represent various sub populations to reduce the mistakes, miscalculations, misdiagnosis and mistreatment,’’ he said.

He said there were many peculiar health pandemics on the continent including malaria and HIV/AIDS, which required specific medical trials, hence the African continent needed her own clinical trial Center.

The event was attended by the CEOs of hospitals, medical professionals, and laboratory technicians as they shared their perspectives on medical devices.

Source: GNA