The fifth issue is the need to focus more on ensuring that medical devices fulfil their potential to improve public health. This means increasing access to the medical devices that are required to deliver basic services: blood transfusion equipment to prevent women experiencing complications in labour, anaesthesia machines, oxygen supplies and basic surgical equipment. It also means addressing new challenges in public health, notably the ongoing rise of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancers and diabetes, and providing medical devices enabling patients to self-monitor their health.

How can the impact of medical devices be improved?

To have public health impact, devices need to be safe, affordable, accessible and appropriate. The new study highlights the advantages of technologies that use alternative power supplies, resist heat, humidity, and dust, relieve the workload, require little maintenance, and can be operated, with no risk to patient safety, by personnel with little specialized training. These include devices like simple glucose meters and test strips for diabetes patients that perform well even in hot and humid homes.

The meeting will focus firmly on improving needs assessment and increasing access to priority devices, especially in low-resource settings. It will aim to agree a set of recommended actions to improve availability, accessibility, appropriateness and safety, and produce a compilation of best practices, available resources, tools and guidelines for integrating medical devices into national health plans, as well as regulation and enforcement.

Source: The World Health Organization