AAMI’s 2024 HTM Leadership Award Winner, Millicent Alooh, regional director at NEST360, is driving improvements in HTM across Africa, advocating for higher standards in biomedical engineering.
By Steven Martinez
For the 2024 HTM Leadership Award, AAMI looked outside the U.S. to recognize someone making a significant impact in their region. Millicent Alooh, Hsc, serves as regional director for BMET implementation at NEST360 in Kenya. Alooh, who has spent her career primarily in Africa, was a bit surprised when she heard that AAMI had selected her.
“It was very exciting and unbelievable, “ says Alooh. “It really encouraged me, and I felt like, ‘Wow, I can do much more, better than I’m already doing,’ just by the fact that I won the award.”
While Alooh was aware of AAMI’s reputation among HTM professionals in the U.S., it was not as well known in Africa. When she won the award, it took some time to explain its significance to her colleagues.
“AAMI’s reputation is really up there, but it’s not an organization that is really well known by the biomeds or the clinical engineers out here,” says Alooh. A fact, she acknowledges, that makes her 2024 award even more surprising—and exciting.
Working in Emerging Markets
Africa is an emerging market for healthcare technology, and as newer equipment and concerns match what is found in the developed world, there are growing pains, particularly in managing this new equipment, says Alooh.
Alooh, a biomedical engineer with 12 years of experience, realized that as she gained more knowledge in medical equipment management, she faced many challenges due to a lack of guidelines and standards, especially compared to other departments in the medical field.
“When you’re working in a hospital environment, you realize that the other health workers are very well organized in terms of the policies that govern their profession and the documentation required from all of them,” says Alooh. “But then, for biomedical engineering, it’s really different.”
In the U.S., HTM professionals often focus on compliance and managing increasing workloads with fewer personnel. By comparison, the African region can feel less regulated and more unpredictable.
“You’re thrown in there and left alone to decide what to do,” says Alooh. “You look around for best practices and try to search the global organizations like the World Health Organization for anything like support. So, I found myself diving deeper into healthcare technology management just to understand how to ensure that the medical equipment lifecycle can be sustained at the hospital level.”
With little standardization in the field and limited resources, the result for healthcare in the region can be devastating. Alooh says that many medical devices end up in junkyards, often called graveyards, not because they are irreparable or obsolete, but due to poor management and the lack of simple spare parts, like fuses, to restore them to working order.
“It’s heartbreaking to see huge, capital-intensive devices lying in the junkyard, and there’s really nothing you can do,” says Alooh. “It’s just because people at the management level don’t understand how they’re supposed to support the management of medical devices.”
Advocating for the HTM Profession
Alooh is also focused on creating a better working environment for HTM workers that reflects their importance to healthcare facilities. She says many medical device workshops were in makeshift structures made of wood or iron sheets, often placed in the back of a facility and in poor condition. Again, a lack of standards was to blame for the shabby accommodations for HTM shops compared to other departments, creating workplace environments that were afterthoughts for medical facilities, belying their importance.
Realizing that the only way to change the situation was to create a set of standards that could be followed everywhere, Alooh set out to garner as much knowledge as she could from the developed world to disseminate it throughout the African HTM community.
Alooh began advocating for better standards to gain support from her HTM colleagues, working with the Ministry of Health and leading the Association of Medical Engineering in Kenya. She has also organized seminars and conferences with industry stakeholders, encouraging a greater emphasis on the vital role HTM plays in healthcare.
In her role with NEST360, she meets with department heads, biomedical engineering leaders, and government officials. The work is challenging, she says, because each country in the African region has its own rules and ways of operating, requiring tailored solutions. She has approached the problem from multiple angles, but she acknowledges that it’s still an ongoing journey, and much work remains to be done.
“I work with the professional societies and the Ministries of Health and advocate in different conferences to ensure that people understand that we also need guidelines,” says Alooh. “We need standards and good working environments, just like doctors, nurses, and any other healthcare worker.”
Inside her ‘Why’
Alooh says she was initially drawn to biomedical engineering for many reasons but was particularly attracted to its emphasis on problem-solving.
“I really like problem-solving, and biomedical engineering is not a boring career because every single day, we have new innovations and inventions coming up,” says Alooh. “With the increasing disease burden worldwide and new technologies coming, you realize you are forever on a landing trajectory. You’re never stagnant.”
But beyond the constant movement, innovation, and problem-solving, she says that at the end of the day, her job is about helping people. Her employer, NEST360, is an international organization focused on improving healthcare conditions in poor countries to reduce the number of preventable infant deaths through resources, education, and policy.
“What excites me most is that I’m able to offer solutions and save a life through the use of my screwdriver as an HTM professional,” says Alooh. “By ensuring that my devices are up and running and functional, I know a life somewhere is saved through my constant dedication and work.”
Leadership can be hard to define, but a successful leader can take on many forms. Some lead by inspiring, and some lead by doing. For Alooh, being a leader means empowering others. She founded the African Women in Biomedical Engineering Alliance and the Women in Biomedical Engineering group in Kenya to empower women in her profession and leverage their collective influence to improve the field. She also advocates for the HTM profession by encouraging STEM students, particularly women, to pursue careers in biomedical engineering.
“Because I know I’m not able to do it alone and because I don’t exist alone as well, I believe in the empowerment of other biomedical engineers to know and understand what I’ve been able to learn,” says Alooh. “For me, leadership is all about mentorship and empowerment of other junior and fellow team members.”
