From the President ... Mary Logan
June 2011
Dear AAMI Community,
Last weekend, we broke all records with more than 1,600 people attending the AAMI Annual Conference & Expo in San Antonio! For those of you who participated in some way, thanks so much for your contribution to making this what many described as "the best AAMI annual conference ever." My top 10 list of personal favorite moments were:
- Dr. Bruce Hallbert's keynote on lessons from the nuclear industry—Soundbite excerpts worth remembering include: "It's expensive and wasteful to assess risk one accident at a time." "Most human errors produce latent conditions with no immediate observable consequences . . . [It's those latent conditions plus an active error that result in accidents]." "Root cause analysis should include a look at low consequence/high volume issues . . . It should also include a look at successes . . . We learn from all of them, not just from adverse incidents."
- Dr. Ann Scott Blouin's keynote—Soundbite excerpts from Ann, EVP at The Joint Commission, include: "Human factors engineering needs to be built into the system." "High reliability organizations must have four ingredients: leadership's complete devotion to becoming high reliability, culture of safety, robust process improvement, and performance measurement."
- Military and VA programs—The fabulous participation of military and VA healthcare technology management professionals enriched the learning environment for everyone.
- George Mills—George is our rock star. As engineering ambassador and knowledge machine for The Joint Commission's environment of care standards, his down-to-earth approachability and willingness to field questions is an incredible gift to healthcare organizations.
- Standards week—Call it cross fertilization, learning from one another, or efficient allocation of resources. Any way you slice it, standards week at the annual conference brings together interdisciplinary experts who pack in as much work in hallways, receptions, and walks "to and from" as they do in their own committee meetings. Common conversation themes across numerous committee meetings were systems engineering, human factors, and safety assurance cases.
- Lessons-learned session on wireless smart pump implementation—Ted Cohen and Colleen Ward from UC Davis Health System led an outstanding session on lessons learned while installing 1,000 wireless smart pumps. Bravo.
- Major project move forward—The ideas, dedication, and positive energy of volunteers for important new projects were evident in meetings throughout the conference. Volunteers moved forward with plans to develop a core curriculum for biomed programs, to expand our benchmarking services, to map out the future of the healthcare technology management profession, and to strengthen our efforts in IT and wireless education.
- Learning environment—It's hard to learn in our day jobs, because our to-do lists and emergencies overwhelm. I loved the learning environment at this year's conference. From small group discussions over breakfast to sharing best practices to skill development sessions, you just can't replicate the richness of this deep learning on the phone, online, or in a one-hour workshop at the end of a busy day.
- Seeing old friends and meeting new ones—The sense of community grows stronger every year. It was a highlight to meet so many students and new professionals, including our two 2011 scholarship winners.
- Customer service—Seeing the AAMI leadership and staff connect with and help so many people made me feel proud to be a part of this amazing organization.
Mark your calendars: Oct. 4-5 for the Medical Device Alarms Summit; Oct. 11-12 for the Medical Device Reprocessing Summit. Enjoy your summer. Stay in touch. Let me know what's on your mind.
Kindest Regards,
Mary Logan, JD, CAE
AAMI President
mlogan@aami.org
+1-703-253-8265