Impact you can audit, not anecdotes
This page is written for the people who fund and evaluate work like ours. It lays out the logic of the model, the evidence behind it, and the exact metrics we commit to reporting — and it will never show a number we can't stand behind.
From idle expertise to equipment uptime
North America holds a surplus of biomedical skill, equipment, and institutional knowledge; mission hospitals hold urgent need and committed people. The network is the connection layer — and every step of it is measurable.
Why this model is leveraged
The scarce ingredient in global biomedical work is not goodwill or even money — it is accumulated repair instinct. The network moves that instinct over a video call instead of an airplane, which means a funded hour of program infrastructure can carry many volunteer hours of donated expertise to many hospitals at once.
Designed to make itself unnecessary
Every engagement transfers capability: documentation, training, parts access, and standards that in-country teams own. Our north-star metric is the share of repairs closed locally — success looks like hospitals that no longer need to call.
Five numbers we commit to reporting
Each program engagement starts with a baseline and ends with a follow-up against the same yardsticks — the same discipline we teach.
Facilities assessed
Hospital readiness assessments completed, with baseline equipment inventories established — the denominator for everything that follows.
Devices returned to service
Out-of-service equipment restored to clinical use, logged per engagement with device class and what the fix required.
Technicians in training
People in structured education pathways with our partners, and the share completing — capability that stays in-country.
Remote support response
Time from a hospital's request to a qualified network response — the metric that tells us whether the network feels real at 2 a.m.
Repairs closed locally
The share of faults resolved by in-country teams without outside hands — the number that should rise until they don't need us.
Where are the numbers?
The network launched its public platform in 2026. First program-year results will be published on this page as they are verified — methodology first, numbers as they are earned. We would rather show you an empty table than a flattering estimate.
The network builds on a decade of documented work
The Global Biomedical Solutions Network is the biomedical arm of The Dalton Foundation, whose published impact reports document the program lineage this network scales.
6 hospitals
standardized on patient monitoring and sterilization, plus X-ray technology in two facilities (2021 impact report)
150+ facilities
represented by 697 Haiti Health Network members across all 10 departments of Haiti (2021 impact report)
12 facilities
in Northern Haiti in a healthcare-strengthening partnership with USAID's American Schools and Hospitals Abroad program (2024)
6 countries
with documented healthcare programs — Haiti, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, India, and the US (2021 impact report)
Figures from The Dalton Foundation's published annual impact reports and the Haiti Health Network's program reporting. Network-specific program metrics will be reported above as they are earned.
The model stands on published research
The same standard applies across our entire updates library: factual claims carry citations, and we link primary sources — 50+ articles on this site do exactly that.
Substantial shares of medical equipment in low-resource settings sit out of service — and the leading causes (training, management, infrastructure) are addressable.
Perry & Malkin, Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing (2011)Donated equipment too often arrives without the manuals, parts, consumables, or training that make it usable — and structured donation practice fixes this.
WHO — Medical device donations guidance (2nd ed., 2024)47% of the world's population has little or no access to diagnostics — much of that gap is equipment and the people who keep it running.
The Lancet Commission on Diagnostics (2021)Biomedical engineering capacity — the human side of equipment — is a recognized, persistent gap in global health workforces.
WHO — Human resources for medical devices
What funding buys here
The volunteer expertise is donated. Funding builds the rails it travels on:
- A parts and consumables pipeline for partner hospitals — the difference between a repair plan and a repair
- A technician education cohort with our accredited education partners
- Remote-support infrastructure: the tooling, translation, and AI assistance that lets one expert serve many hospitals
- Assessment engagements that turn a container of unknowns into a managed equipment program
The Global Biomedical Solutions Network is a program of The Dalton Foundation, which serves as its organizational and fiscal home. We'll gladly walk you through the program design, partner agreements, and measurement plan.
Dig deeper
The thinking behind these metrics is published, like everything else here: