AAMI Journal Explores Use of Simulation in Healthcare

Simulation plays a key and growing role in modern healthcare, including its use in the design of medical devices and technology, and how they are evaluated and improved.

The July/August issue of BI&T (Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology), AAMI’s bimonthly, peer-reviewed journal, takes a look at simulation with a cover story that examines its “explosive growth” in training, and how it’s being used to help address some of healthcare’s most pressing challenges, including the effective management of clinical alarms.

One of the many experts quoted in the story—“More Than Make Believe: The Power and Promise of Simulation”—said that the use of simulation is only going to grow.

“If you are working in healthcare, you should expect to be doing simulation until you retire,” said David Gaba, MD, associate dean for immersive and simulation-based learning at Stanford University in California. “This is the approach that has been so powerful in other industries of intrinsic hazard and we should strive to match their records of safety.”

The discipline could mean new career opportunities for healthcare technology management professionals in simulation centers and labs.

“In 2000, there were about 100 clinical simulation centers in the United States. Today, there are more than 1,000,” said Joseph T. Samosky, the director of the Simulation and Medical Technology Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

The article examines the many uses of simulation, including as a training tool for clinicians. Some hospitals use simulation to improve teamwork among healthcare professionals, looking at how they interact to accomplish certain tasks.

And manufacturers are turning to simulation centers and labs while devices are still in the development stage. With the devices in use, events are staged and recorded for designers to study.

“This allows us to explore how users react to our designs, while collecting strong data that we can go back and replay over and over again to see exactly what happened,” said Pat Baird, a system engineer with Baxter Healthcare Corporation.

The issue also includes a separate, in-depth interview with Samosky, who talks about what the healthcare industry can learn from aviation with its use of simulation.

With more than a dozen other articles and columns, this issue of BI&T covers a host of  issues, and includes a comprehensive review of research  on alarm fatigue, a condition where caregivers become desensitized after responding to so many alarms.

BI&T has a readership of nearly 13,000, and is a benefit of AAMI membership. The award-winning journal is dedicated to the developers, managers, and users of medical devices and technology. For more information about BI&T and to see highlights from this issue, please go to: http://www.aami.org/publications/BIT.

AAMI, the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, is a nonprofit organization founded in 1967. It is a diverse community of nearly 7,000 healthcare technology professionals united by one important mission—supporting the healthcare community in the development, management, and use of safe and effective medical technology.