Assessment of Clinical Engineering Departments in developing countries

This study was to evaluate the development level of Clinical Engineering Departments (CEDs) in hospitals in developing countries. The method of data collection was a survey done by structured questionnaire sent by Email and Listserv. In total, 61 responses (9% response rate) were grouped into two regions: Latin America (27 from Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil) and Asia (34 from India, Bangladesh, P.R. China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa); The responses from those developing countries were compared with those from developed countries acquired in previous studies done by Frize and Glouhova. In this study, results indicate that CEDs that responded to the survey from developing countries have similar organizational structure as developed countries, but there are differences in personnel educational levels, responsibilities, and resources. We also identified differences in the level of development of CEDs in respondents from Asia and those from Latin America. The latter were more advanced overall than those in Asia, but CEDs in both regions need to improve their level of development. Future research should focus on collecting more data from CEDs of developing countries, and expand the quantitative analysis that will be possible with a larger sample.