About Fit-Check
We screen donated medical equipment against the conditions of the clinic receiving it, before anyone books a container.
The problem
A great deal of donated medical equipment arrives and never works. Not because it is broken, but because it does not fit where it was sent.
A 110 volt ventilator on a 240 volt grid. A machine that needs piped oxygen sent to a clinic with cylinders. A unit rated to 40°C in a ward that reaches 42°C. Sterile stock that expires in the container.
Each of those is knowable in advance. Nobody checks, because checking means holding the specification of the device against the real conditions of the building, and that has always been done by hand.
How it works
A donor picks the device from our library, pastes its specification, or photographs the rating plate. A model does one job here: it names the device (maker, model, kind) and transcribes the plate.
If the device is in the library of 12 devices whose manufacturer documents we have checked, its facts come from those documents, each with the page it was read from, and the model reads nothing more. If it is not, the model reads values from the donor's own text or plate, and code keeps a value only when it appears in that text. Anything else stays unknown. Every fact is labelled with its source.
The decision is not made by the model. 15 checks written as ordinary code compare those facts against the clinic's recorded conditions. Given the same facts they return the same verdict every time.
A verdict is one of four: ship it; ship it with named add-ons; needs info; won't work. An unknown fact never counts as a pass. It becomes a question, the offer ranks below the fully known ones, and nothing is put to a donor until it is answered.
Offers that won't work stay visible with the check that blocked them. A screen is not a clearance: a person still decides.
What we check
Power
Mains voltage and frequency against the rating plate, and how often the grid fails.
Environment
Ward temperature and humidity against the device's rated range. A ward hotter than the rating with no air conditioning won't work; damp can be answered with a dehumidifier.
Utilities
Medical oxygen, compressed air and distilled water. A device that needs one the clinic lacks won't work there: that is building work, not something to put in the container.
Support
Consumables, spare parts and manufacturer support, from the FDA device registry and the answers the nonprofit records, never from a model's memory. Shelf life on arrival.
People and manuals
Whether staff can run and repair it, and whether the manual is in a language they read.
Import rules
The receiving country's rules for donated equipment: label language, remaining service life and the paperwork. Rules are on file for Uganda; any other country reads as needs info.
What a clinic gets
An add-on counts only when it ships in the container and plugs in: a transformer, a stabiliser, backup power, a dehumidifier, consumables or spare parts. A power add-on is checked against the clinic's mains itself before it counts.
For each offer Fit-Check builds a handover packet: the manufacturer's own documents, a one-page care card read from the manual with every number checked against it, a translation into the staff's language where the service supports it, and the import paperwork the country asks for.
What we are built on
The acceptance criteria in the World Health Organization's guidance on medical device donations, Annex 1. The marking requirements and default environmental conditions in IEC 60601-1. Published grid data for 243 countries, and the United States FDA device registry.
Fit-Check is a screening tool, not a regulator, a shipper or a clinical authority. We do not take custody of equipment and we do not arrange freight.