Ten years ago in summer 2014, I concluded work in establishing a biomedical equipment technician (BMET) training program at Instituto Nacional de Formación Profesional (INFOP) in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, through Engineering World Health and the GE HealthCare Foundation.
I returned to the U.S. in 2014, and personally visited the school every year from 2015-2019 to deliver supplies and support, with a recent five year hiatus in visits due to the global epidemic and personal reasons. I'm thrilled I was about to visit last week and donate to the school via my company SaluNexus!
Furthermore, I'm very pleased to see the continuous investment in the program and success of the program on the part of INFOP, including:
- Continually graduating classes. Each year for the past decade INFOP has graduated new BMETs, many of whom now are working in the hospitals of Honduras or who have started their own companies for medical devices service, repair, and sales.
- Hiring new staff. The BMET program at INFOP now has a fourth instructor, in addition to the three we initially trained from 2010 to 2014.
- Investing in equipment and infrastructure. The school has a budget in 2024 of 4.3M Lempiras to invest in new medical equipment and infrastructure to keep the school updated and future-looking.
- Directly supporting hospitals. The INFOP BMET program maintains an alliance with the Honduras Ministry of Health, and regularly sends groups of instructors and teachers out to public hospitals to repair critical medical equipment serving the people of Honduras.
All of the credit for these successes over the past ten years belongs to INFOP, and in particular the instructors executing on this program since the beginning: francisco ortiz, Wadi Almendares, and Carlos Castillo. So great to see you again!
A decade later, I still consider the work we did together on this program to be the pinnacle of my career to-date.
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