How Africa Can Create Its Own Medical Technology
Some technological advancements, such as biomedical engineering, can be used in saving lives. The biomedical engineering field draws knowledge from different disciplines such as computer science, public health, clinical practice and biomedical sciences.
The information from these four areas has been combined to design medical devices for proper diagnosis and treatment of diseases.
In Africa, most of the medical equipment is imported since they cannot be produced locally. It is challenging to use some of the machines since the medical staff lack the knowledge to operate them. However, it is high time that Africa needs to develop and produce its medical tools. Besides, experienced biomedical engineers are needed for these innovations to be successful. It has led to several African Universities to launch the African Biomedical Engineering Consortium to spearhead these innovations.
Need for skill development
Biomedical engineers alone cannot make Africa a world leader in the innovation of medical devices. They need other fundamental structures such as the equipped laboratories for prototyping and experimenting. Furthermore, the required regulations must be put in place to ensure the safety of the equipment and intellectual property. However, the Consortium focus is to produce individuals who can bring innovation into work.
For the last five years, the Consortium has brought together established and new biomedical engineering in several African Universities. These programs are to help the continent develop the required equipment in the health sector. Furthermore, the network is growing stronger as some members have opted to pay attention to transferring skills and knowledge across all participating institutions.
Additionally, a capacity-building project has been launched to help train the postgraduate student in biomedical courses. Six African Universities have been selected to ensure this project kicks off immediately. The selected students will be offered a full scholarship to enable them to finish their courses. The initiative focuses on building techniques that will address African needs. It will shift its core by engaging learners in programs that will rise from local realities such as:
- Create prosthetic limbs for landmine victims
- Use mobile phones with custom made applications as diagnostic tools in rural areas
- Develop equipment that uses 3D visualization for the body anatomy.
Establishing Academic foundations
Training more scholars is not enough to make Africa develop its own medical devices. They need academicians who can maneuver the interdisciplinary setting necessary to develop technological results to health problems. The project also aims at supporting other academics who want to improve their technique.
The project is also allowing African scholars to travel at any partnering institution to enhance their skills further. It is also another opportunity for African Universities to harmonize their biomedical engineering curricula and also have benchmarks on each other. By doing all those, Africa can develop their own medical devices to improve the health sector.