Core Medical Equipment
Date
2011
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Abstract
Core medical equipment” refers here to technologies that are commonly considered as important or necessary for specific preventive, diagnostic, treatment or rehabilitation procedures carried out in most health care facilities.
Today, there are more than 10,000 types of medical devices available. The selection of appropriate medical equipment always depends on local, regional or national requirements; factors to consider include the type of health facility where the devices are to be used, the health work force available and the burden of disease experienced in the specific catchment area. It is therefore impossible to make a list of core medical equipment which would be exhaustive and/or universally applicable.
With that being said, we have reproduced hereafter a set of core medical equipment fact sheets which have been issued by the ECRI Institute and the GMDN Agency, with a view to raising stakeholders’ awareness about their existence and their functionality.
Each fact sheet displays a type of medical equipment, the health problems addressed by the device, the operation procedures, its typical size, weight and price range, and infrastructure requirements for effective and safe use. Technologies are placed into context of existing nomenclature systems; they are not specific to any brand, model or vendor. The equipment is classified under the following categories: therapeutic, diagnostic, chronic disease and child health.
The WHO Department of Essential Health Technologies is planning to continuously update the list of core medical equipment and make it publicly available on the WHO website for information purposes, subject to the disclaimers here below.
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Medical Equipment