Context research

In this research line we focus on conducing context research to understand the usage and barriers to use of medical equipment in healthcare settings all over the world. These studies increase our understanding of local availability, requirements and need for innovations.

The lack of medical equipment in many LMICs is a huge contributor to for example the unmet need of provided surgical care. We conduct context research to identify both the gap in availability but also the mismatch between the equipment that is available on the market and the needs in LMICs. This information is valuable in guiding our innovation to ensure we can make an impact in providing clinical care in LMICs, but we also aim to provide the international global health community with valuable information on both availability and barriers to specific medical equipment in these contexts.

We published various studies focusing on global availability of surgical equipment:
- We studied the availability of general surgical equipment in 9 African countries
- We studied the availability of laparoscopic equipment in 12 African countries based on surveys with surgical providers and 21 biomedical engineering technicians working in 6 different hospitals across Kenya on their experiences with laparoscopic equipment
- To understand the root cause of these barriers, we detailed the surgical equipment journey, based on the experiences of biomedical engineering technicians working in Kenya

We are currently working on a literature review to detail the current state of the art of laparoscopic equipment in LMICs surgical programs to identify gaps and needs for efforts to increase availability.