MEDAAS - The Procedure

Organizations and individuals wishing to donate equipment are invited to complete a questionnaire. Similarly organizations wishing to request donations of equipment are invited to complete a questionnaire.

The required information regarding both offers and requests will go to a group of ‘experts’ - clinicians, engineers, medical physicists and technicians - with knowledge of the materials and/or the locations likely to be the destination of the transferred equipment. Those experts with knowledge relevant to each offer/request will then – jointly – assess the information and give a judgment – by consensus – concerning suitability: “appropriate” or “potentially appropriate”, i.e. YES, or otherwise NO.

‘Appropriate’ means: useable and supportable in the relevant situation.

‘YES’ judgments will be graded:

(i) minimal or very limited resource area, or

(ii) intermediate resource area.

‘NO’ judgments: comments /suggestions may be offered.

Items judged ‘appropriate’ or ‘potentially appropriate’ will be registered. A result (i.e. YES or NO) within 2 weeks of the information being presented to the experts is the aim. Potential matches will be sought. When a potential match is agreed upon, the 2 (two) parties will be notified; from that point the matter is, in all respects, in their hands. A completed deal should be notified to the MEDAAS Administrators and the materials removed from the Register.

SUBMITTED questionnaires will go automatically to the experts' discussion forum and an alerting message will go to the appropriate group of experts.  Each expert in the group will decide whether the material is within his/her area of competence and act accordingly.  Administrators and moderators will also be notified.

Opinions or comments will go onto the forum for viewing by all members of the group and moderators/administrators etc.
Discussion, exchange of views may need to take place.
The termination of  process will be by Consensus which

• may be apparent to all and is stated by one or more,

• may be suspected by one (or more) and  a query to this effect be posted, leading to full agreement or further discussion, or

• may be ascertained by a moderator (and suggested to the group).

MATCHING

• an expert may recall an item – offer or request - which may match a just-completed assessment, and investigate,

• one of the experts involved may undertake to look at the registers to find a possible Match,

• a moderator inspecting the Registers periodically will seek matches.