Experts, electricity ‘not needed’ for health innovations

Easy-to-use equipment including portable respiratory monitoring systems and ventilators with extended battery life are among a collection of newhealthinnovationsidentified by the World Health Organization (WHO) to help manageCOVID-19in low-resource settings.

The compendium of 24 new technologies also includes novel, simple items such as a colourised bleach additive that allows the naked eye to detect non-sterilised surfaces, to help improve basic hygiene during the pandemic, says the WHO.

卫生机构强调，新技术正在加速到处的医疗保健，但必须在所有医疗机构中随时提供可用的医疗机构，并保证了质量。

“There must also be a deliberate effort at capacity building not only for consumption of such technologies but also for knowledge transfer whereby people at the grassroots are equipped with the knowledge to maintain and even improve such innovations.”

Jeremiah Owiti, executive director, Centre for Independent Research, Nairobi

Adriana Velazquez Berumen, WHO senior advisor for medical devices, said: “WHO has been collecting innovative technologies that can be impactful at places where there is unstable electricity and a lack of specialised health workforce.”

She said the WHO had appointed a panel of experts to review the technical specifications, regulatory compliance, and technical management of such innovations.

“Many of the experts are from low- to middle-income countries and will provide more insight into the emerging technologies as well as help in collecting data on the use of such technologies,” she toldSciDev.Net.

The aim of the compendium is to select and assess technologies that can have immediate and future impact on COVID-19 preparedness and response and offer solutions to unmet medical needs, according to the WHO. It said 15 of the technologies were already commercially available in some countries, while the rest were still at prototype stage.

One example cited was a solar-powered oxygen concentrator used to treat childhood pneumonia at a regional children’s hospital in Somalia’s Galmudug state.

Pneumonia accounts for 800,000 deaths per year and the WHO estimates that 20 to 40 per cent of these deaths could be prevented if oxygen therapy was available.

Berumen解释说，该系统是由加拿大企业家开发的，它使用电池和太阳能来产生商业氧气。她说，在Covid-19加速了全球对氧气需求并使氧气供应越来越紧迫的时候，设备特别有用。

“The concentrator works to ensure oxygen is given in healthcare settings where oxygen is unavailable and electricity is unstable,” said Berumen.

“In this region in Somalia, for instance, it has been very effective in treating childhood pneumonia.

“It is expected that more units could be purchased in the future to support oxygen delivery and good patient outcomes.”

在南非，坦桑尼亚和孟加拉国，这是一个智能手机应用程序，使人们能够在家中测量自己的血压，而无需使用其他设备或设备进行测试。

Studies are under way to test the product in different settings, with a view to using it more broadly in low-and middle-income countries, Berumen said.

According to Anuraj Shankar, lead researcher at the Eijkman-Oxford Clinical Research Unit in Jakarta, Indonesia, enabling anyone to asses blood pressure accurately with an already available device such as a smartphone opens the door to personal monitoring of many acute and chronic medical conditions.

Shankar说：“ Shankar说：“这是技术在Covid-19世界中赋予健康和至关重要的技术的巨大飞跃。

“与其他护理点测试的协同作用[与患者进行的测试，而不是在实验室中进行的测试），并且向全球数字健康的过渡意味着对患有高血压的孕妇的最佳护理，并会导致更健康的母亲和健康的婴儿。透明

Jeremiah Owiti, executive director at the Centre for Independent Research in Nairobi, said the scaling up of emerging health technologies and innovations faced serious challenges, especially in low- to middle-income countries.

“We are not just talking about common problems like prohibitive costs of such technologies, or lack of capacity and human capital, but endemic corruption that ensures critical infrastructure such as roads and electricity supply are missing,” Owiti toldSciDev.Net.

He believes that coherent policies are needed to cover the procurement, supply and deployment of such technologies at grassroots level.

“There must also be a deliberate effort at capacity building not only for consumption of such technologies but also for knowledge transfer whereby people at the grassroots are equipped with the knowledge to maintain and even improve such innovations,” Owiti said.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Global desk.