Task-shifting medical devices

Expanding access of medical services to a larger proportion of the population is critical to improving health outcomes worldwide. However, a major barrier to access is the lack of highly trained medical personnel in most areas of low- and middle-income countries. In these areas, minimally trained healthcare providers are the most common point of contact for patients. Understanding how medical devices and procedures can be changed to reduce the required training and minimize errors would allow medical services to be expanded to underserved populations. Development of these task-shifting or task-sharing medical devices is critical to enabling different cadres of healthcare workers to perform more medical procedures safely and easily. The Sienko Research Group focuses on understanding what it means for a device to be task-shifting, what are the properties of task-shifting devices, and how they can be implemented in the future.