GOAL 3 Foundation Targets €3M to Scale IMPALA in Africa

In Short

GOAL 3 Foundation has published its 2026–2027 plan to expand IMPALA, a hospital patient monitoring system built for low-resource wards. The foundation says it wants to raise €3 million across 2026 and 2027. It is targeting scale-up to reach 500,000 patients per year with improved care.

What Happened

In its new plan, GOAL 3 Foundation says many preventable deaths in African hospitals are linked to late detection of patient deterioration. This often happens when wards are short-staffed, equipment is missing or broken, and vital signs are checked too infrequently.

The foundation’s response is the IMPALA system, which combines bedside monitors with a data platform. A monitor tracks basic vital signs and sends them over a local network to a central view of multiple patients. The platform also includes clinical support apps and dashboards, which are simple tools that help staff spot risk earlier and see trends over time.

GOAL 3 says IMPALA is designed to keep working in tough conditions, including power issues, using battery backup and local networking. The group also uses a service model, meaning hospitals can sign service contracts for maintenance, uptime, and ongoing support.

According to the plan, GOAL 3 is active in 45 hospitals across Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, with more than 700 monitors deployed. It says 85% of these sites have signed service contracts, and another 25 hospitals are already funded for installation. National scale-up discussions are underway with governments in Malawi and Rwanda, and the foundation says it has specific projects planned for 2026 in Nigeria and Kenya.

Why It Matters

Patient monitoring is a basic hospital workflow, but it breaks down quickly when staff are stretched. If deterioration is spotted late, treatment becomes more expensive, more time-consuming, and harder to manage.

GOAL 3 points to evidence from studied settings, including a reported 40% to 51% reduction in pediatric mortality in Malawi and a 45% reduction in time spent on monitoring. It also cites a cost-effectiveness analysis that estimates IMPALA costs $2.90 per patient, with healthcare and societal cost savings compared to standard care.

If the foundation hits its €3 million target, IMPALA’s expansion into new countries like Nigeria, plus added maternal care and triage workflows, could make hospital digitisation more measurable, not just “paper-to-screen” adoption.