Equipment maintenance in Kenya

The Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) is located in Eldoret in northwest Kenya. It is one of the biggest public hospitals in Kenya, providing a broad range of procedures to patients from the entire country. Many surgeons from all over the world have worked here for either a short or long time, giving this hospital a very international climate. A group of biomedical engineering technicians (BMET) is in charge of all medical equipment used within the hospital. BMETs encounter many problems in their daily routine, such as a lack of spare parts and tools, equipment that is overdue for planned preventative maintenance and unorganised paper records of equipment history. 

TU Delft students have worked on creating open-source software using Google Drive to keep track of equipment, monitor its performance and enforce planned preventative maintenance schedules. During consecutive internships, they focused on software design, implementation of a sticker-system, training employees and improving the system. Future challenges include evaluation of this system, translation from Google Drive to a more suitable platform/program and expansion to other hospitals in Kenya who have expressed interest in using this system. Students who are interested in working on these challenges or other engineering problems in MTRH are welcome to contact Roos Oosting or Julie Fleischer.