ARLINGTON, VA — How can medical technology managers help lessen the “environmental footprint” of their facilities, while saving money at the same time? That issue will be the heart of a discussion to take place during the Annual Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) to be held in San Jose, CA from May 31-June 2.

David Stiles, CBET, biomedical engineering manager with Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in CA, will discuss how his facility “worked in concert with our electric provider in developing energy conservation techniques that provide us with rebates and major savings on our electric use costs.”

“Savings came from easy fixes like installing timers in utility closets and mechanical rooms and motion detection switches in offices, as well as from more capital-intensive remedies like replacing older emergency generators, plant chillers, and boilers with more energy-efficient models,” Stiles tells AAMI News.

Stiles and Walter Vernon, author of The Green Guide for Health Care, will share their innovative ideas and tips during a session entitled Improving Your Hospital’s Efficiency and Environmental Impact.

 “Healthcare facilities are part of the movement to maintain a healthy environment, and are faced with the question of what they can do to help reduce energy consumption, pollution, and waste,” says Stiles.

For more tips on “going green, review the Sept/Oct 2007 cover story of AAMI’s journal, BI&T, or retrieve the article online at www.aami.org.

This session is one of nearly 50 educational sessions scheduled to take place at AAMI’s Annual Conference & Expo. The conference is designed to help attendees maximize productivity, reduce costs, improve patient safety, integrate new technologies, and comply with Joint Commission standards and FDA regulations. The Expo Hall gives participants a firsthand look at the world’s latest medical devices.

The conference will also feature an amazing family story told by one of the founding members of AAMI.

Early on the morning of July 31, 1942, near the Aleutian Islands, a confrontation took place between a Japanese freighter and the Grunion, a U.S. submarine commanded by Lt. Cmdr. Mannert L. Abele. The vessel was never heard from again. For more than a half century, the U.S. Navy knew nothing of the confrontation, and listed the fate of the submarine and its 70 crew members as “missing in action, cause unknown.”

Lt. Cmdr. Abele left three sons when the Grunion disappeared, including John Abele, founder of Boston Scientific.
For years, John Abele and his brothers engaged in a relentless search for the final resting place of the ship. And more than 55 years after it disappeared, the Grunion was finally found by a search team in the Bering Sea.

At the 2008 Dwight E. Harken, MD, Memorial Lecture, Abele will describe the amazing search that he and his brothers led and the discoveries they made.

The experience has been “very humbling and an amazing privilege for all of us to work with an incredible band of volunteers and professionals to find answers to long standing questions and to honor those who sacrificed their lives on our behalf,” says Abele.

Also at AAMI’s Annual Conference, keynote speaker Paul Root Wolpe, PhD, will present “An Amazing Look at Our Future,” which will include a visual journey through the latest scientific developments in medicine and biotechnology, and an explanation of how those advances will revolutionize human life in the coming decades. Wolpe is recognized as an expert on the impact of biotechnology on human health and well being, and has served as the first chief of bioethics for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

To register for the conference or for more information, visit www.aami.org/ac.