ENGINEERING WORLD HEALTH

Our goal is to increase awareness, initiate training and impact global health by 1) Improving the quality of healthcare in resource poor communities of Africa, Central America and Asia, 2) Providing a learning experience that gives insights to the challenges of operating and maintaining healthcare technology in the developing world, 3) Creating a cross-cultural learning experience that shows the joys and challenges of working in a different culture by providing basic operation and repair training of medical equipment to professionals and technicians in the developing world, and 4) Encouraging the development of low-cost technologies directed at the needs of developing country healthcare.

Through the BMET Training program, EWH increases the availability of trained biomedical equipment technicians in low-income countries, who are then able to maintain and repair medical equipment in their countries' hospitals. EWH works with a country's Ministry of Health and a local educational partner to ensure the training program can exist independently of EWH and continue training BMETs after our programs end.

Through EWH's Institute programs, EWH trains university STEM students and young professionals to work as volunteers in low-resource hospitals. Through intense technical training and study of the language and culture, participants gain deep insight into how their program countries' healthcare systems work and how medical equipment works (or doesn't) in low-resource settings. During this time, they work alongside local hospital staff, exchanging knowledge and training.

EWH has extensive experience working in low-resource medical settings. Two of our staff are biomedical engineers who have both participated in our Institute programs and spent extended amounts of time on the ground in the countries in which we work. Additionally, EWH has developed many close connections with university partners, local educational partners, ministries of health, and local hospitals.

EWH has established sustainable, independent, accredited BMET Training programs in Honduras, Rwanda, and Nigera. We also completed programs in Cambodia and Ethiopia.

EWH's Institute programs, since 2004, have seen over 1,200 participants repair more than 13,000 pieces of hospital equipment, worth an estimated $26 million. The equipment they repair ranges from blood pressure cuffs to hospital beds, from aspirators to ultrasound machines, from autoclaves to incubators. Additionally, these participants have taken on a wide variety of secondary projects to leave their hospitals with tangible improvements, including organizing and improving BMET workshops, building play areas for pediatric wards, and supplying difficult-to-find spare parts. Our Institute programs have expanded rapidly in the last few years, and we hope to reach even more countries in the years to come.