Abstract:
All over the world, biomedical technology is advancing as fast as possible, African countries are playing a great role in the advancement of the biomedical engineering field hence improving the healthcare sector. Rwanda is a developing East African country that aims to reach Upper MiddleIncome Country (UMIC) by 2035 and High-Income Country (HIMC) by 2050. The government implemented a variety of techniques to achieve the SDG (Sustainable Developing Goals) goals of improving population health. Public health facilities in Rwanda are more than 500 Health centers, 45 District hospitals, 6 Referral Hospitals, and 4 Provincial Hospitals located throughout the province. Technology has played a significant role in the evolution of medicine to increase healthcare quality. Medical equipment plays a key role in health service delivery. To ensure the lifetime of medical equipment, regular maintenance should be put in place. Biomedical technicians in the hospital do need a tool that could facilitate them in troubleshooting and repair of medical equipment in order to boost the quality of maintenance. The adoption of a mobile application would help alleviate the problem of unrepaired medical equipment held in hospitals across the country. This project aims to design and develop a mobile application “Mobile-MERS” (Medical Equipment Repair System) that will help to optimize the maintenance of medical equipment specifically for equipment, which does not have a service maintenance contract. Six Biomedical technicians from three selected hospitals participated in this study, especially as a testing team. Cloud-based mobile app technology was used to design this project. The use of the Mobile-MERS app will reduce the number of broken-down equipment in the hospital. This work provides a variety of solutions to the underlying threat of unstable medical equipment; therefore health facilities and private companies are advised to use this tool to lift up the quality of healthcare.
