The Ghana Medical Innovation Expo 2026 has ended with a call for Ghanaian innovators to design low-cost medical equipment together with health workers, from the drawing board, so that devices meet local needs and can be maintained by local engineers.

The Director of the Institutional Care Division of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Lawrence Ofori Boadu, made the call at the Medical Innovation Expo 2026.

Organised by Academic City University in partnership with Northeastern University, USA and the 4GBI (For Ghana Biomedical Innovation), the three-day expo was themed "Beyond the No-Bed Syndrome". It brought together policymakers, health professionals, researchers, engineers and innovators.

Bed management system

In a speech read on behalf of the Director-General of the GHS, Dr Boadu said the Service was implementing an integrated bed management and referral coordination system to give ambulance crews real-time information on available beds and the capacity of health facilities to provide the required care.

He said Ghana had about one hospital bed per 1,000 people, against the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation of five, adding that increasing the number of beds alone would not solve the problem.

What was needed, he said, was a coordinated system that enabled patients to reach the right facility, with the appropriate equipment and skilled professionals, at the right time.

He cited the case of a 29-year-old engineer who was knocked down at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra on September 5 last year. Although an ambulance reached him within minutes, he was taken from one hospital to another and died without being admitted.

A committee set up to investigate the death found a "chain of delays", including inadequate stabilisation and poor coordination among health facilities.

Dr Boadu said the GHS had directed health facilities to stabilise emergency patients rather than turn them away, while thousands of health workers had been trained in basic life support.

Bed tracking software has also been piloted at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Greater Accra Regional Hospital and Tema General Hospital, while bed management bureaus have been established in 10 regions.

He said these initiatives were being integrated into a system that would give ambulance crews a dispatch console, referral coordination and a live view of available beds across the country.

Local solutions

Dr Boadu said the Bed Management Bureau would provide real-time information on bed availability, particularly at regional and teaching hospitals, to help ambulance teams decide where to send patients.

He stressed that the challenge went beyond physical beds.

"It's not just a matter of beds, but again, with the skill, because when patients need care, it's not about the physical bed, but it's about the skill and then the equipment to manage that patient," he said.

Dr Boadu said the GHS was also working towards establishing a National Teleconsultation Centre to provide expert advice to lower-level facilities and reduce unnecessary referrals to major hospitals.

He added that some imported equipment was difficult to maintain because the technology was beyond the capabilities of local clinical engineers.

Innovation

The Senior Research and Development Director of External Innovation at Johnson & Johnson MedTech, Dr Ibrahim Badejo, said innovation should start with unmet clinical needs and aim to solve real healthcare problems rather than simply producing sophisticated technology.

According to him, the measure of innovation was its impact on patients and communities.

Dr Badejo said Ghana could become an innovation hub if it developed solutions to local challenges and scaled them globally, adding that innovations should improve clinical outcomes, affordability and access, since solutions that patients could not afford or reach would have limited impact.

He urged innovators to identify unmet needs, build multidisciplinary teams, validate their ideas early and work with hospitals, industry and government to scale successful solutions.

Expo history

The Vice-President of Academic Affairs at Academic City University, Dr Sena Agbodjah, said the BioInnovation Centre was established through a partnership involving Academic City, Northeastern University and Ghana BioInnovation, with a mandate to develop medical innovations to improve healthcare delivery.

She said the annual expo brought together academia, industry, regulators and innovators to share their work and identify gaps that could guide future innovation. The first edition, held in October 2025 on the theme "New Paradigms in Healthcare Technology", drew more than 200 participants.

Dr Agbodjah said this year's theme was chosen because the "no-bed syndrome" was a systemic challenge requiring solutions beyond simply increasing the number of hospital beds.