The IMPALA System

GOAL 3 is a social enterprise named after Sustainable Development GOAL 3 (SDG 3). This is one of the 17 sustainable goals of the United Nations to draw attention to the world’s biggest challenges. SDG 3 focuses specifically on good health and well-being. With subgoal 3.2 aimed at reducing (preventable) child mortality. The social enterprise GOAL 3 is named after SDG 3 as a tribute and a mission statement, advocating and innovating for good health and well-being worldwide. GOAL 3 aims for fair and accessible healthcare for everyone and does so by enabling and empowering health workers at places where it is needed the most.

The IMPALA system is an end-to-end clinical support system for health facilities in low-resource settings. This tablet-based solution combines a simplified electronic patient record and a user-friendly, durable vital signs monitoring device into an integrated system that is fit for this context. IMPALA enables easy collection and visualization of relevant clinical data. Integrated decision support tools assist health workers to monitor and manage their patients better with the same or reduced effort.

Health workers in low resource settings are faced with many challenges. The low staffing numbers, lack of training, and the overburdened environment leads to late detections of critical illnesses, which leads to preventable deaths and complications. The lack of suitable equipment functioning in these low resource settings makes this problem even bigger. The IMPALA system is designed to support health workers in these challenging environments. The system does so by supporting health workers to monitor, prioritize and manage their patients better with the same or reduced effort. The result is better quality of care, efficiency gains through timely interventions and improved resource allocation across the health system.

The IMPALA system is designed in the context of low resource settings by working closely with end-users in a human-centered approach. This resulted in a very intuitive and easy to use system that can be used with limited or no training, really making a difference at the point-of-care. The long battery life, robustness, and durability make the system very suited for harsh environments. By connecting patient monitoring systems to a server and a tablet, the IMPALA system becomes more of a clinical decision support system, offering much more functionalities then current patient monitoring solutions. This connection ensures that patient management, data storage, decision support applications, and even algorithms can be enabled at both a point-of-care as an administrative level. The digital infrastructure and approach in the development of this system makes it easy to connect and integrate applications like EMR systems, telehealth, and decision support.

The IMPALA system is designed to save time and effort for the health workers working in the wards by providing 1) Better patient prioritization, and early detection, 2) facilitating the automation of protocols and decision support, and 3) leading to a reduced number of patients and reduced workload. For a facility, the IMPALA system can save cost & improve quality of care, by 1) using data for hospital management and providing insights in quality of care, 2) leading to reduced admission time and early intervention, which decreases costs. By making the IMPALA system accessible through hybrid business models your facility can start working with the IMPALA system today!

Successful implementation is the key to success. Therefore, this has the highest priority from the earliest stages of development until long after our systems are sold and running. We perform a quickscan assessing the context and needs of a hospital prior to implementation, to ensure a good fit with the product and identify bottlenecks for creating sustainable added value prior to installation and implementation. After this, we will Implement the system through our own local implementation team. Our system will be provided as a complete and integrated system consisting of monitoring hardware, enabling communication tools and tablets, combined with the clinical support software. Due to the easy-to-use design, we reduce the chance of errors in use and work towards a plug-and-play solution. We will provide support at a distance by monitoring of system usage, collection of user feedback and providing tailored support to users of the system to ensure adequate usage and early identification of bottlenecks/challenges that may hamper its use and impact. Service onsite for maintenance and providing an effective supply-chain for spare parts and consumables by creating local service teams. Initially this will be done by GOAL 3 to monitor the needs closely. At a later stage GOAL 3 will collaborate with distributors.

The IMPALA systems are designed, tested, and developed in the Netherlands - Europe in close collaboration with doctors and nurses working across Africa. The monitoring systems are manufactured in China to keep the costs competitive and undergo ISO certified quality management procedures.