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AAMI Adds Awards to Recognize Volunteers, Young Leaders

Seeking to better recognize and honor outstanding leaders in medical technology, AAMI has revamped its awards program, creating two new awards entirely and updating the names of others.

“We felt that the awards need a bit of a ‘freshening up,’ ” says Steven Yelton, chairman of the Electrical Engineering Technologies Department, Center for Innovative Technologies at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College in Cincinnati, OH. Yelton is a member of AAMI’s Board of Directors and sat on a task force that evaluated the awards. “I believe that the board also feels that the new awards are consistent with AAMI’s mission and strategic plan.”

AAMI presents its awards at its annual conference, which for 2013 will take place in Long Beach, CA., June 1-3. The awards are administered by AAMI and its Foundation.

The Young Professional Award—one of the new honors—will be presented to someone under 40 who “exhibits exemplary professional accomplishments” with at least three years of experience in healthcare. Yelton says the new award is meant, in part, to recognize and address one of the demographic challenges that the healthcare technology field faces.

“It is a fact that we have a somewhat graying workforce, and AAMI is working hard to help cultivate new leaders,” says Yelton. “The Young Professional Award will help us achieve that goal.”

The new Spirit of AAMI Award recognizes an outstanding contribution from an AAMI volunteer. “AAMI is the only organization focusing on patient safety with regard to medical instrumentation,” says Marcy Petrini, professor of medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, MS, and a board member. “Individuals and organizations working toward and succeeding in those goals are our unsung heroes, and they deserve to be thanked for their role in this important aspect of patient safety.”

Ideal candidates will have a long record of AAMI service, have led committees, and helped bring together diverse stakeholders to forge consensus.

The titles for some of the existing AAMI awards changed. For example, the AAMI Clinical/Biomedical Engineering Achievement Award is now AAMI’s Healthcare Technology Management Leader of the Year Award. The AAMI & Becton Dickinson Professional Achievement Award is now the AAMI & Becton Dickinson’s Patient Safety Award.
The other awards are the:

The deadline for nominations for all of the awards is Feb. 15, 2013. To view the nomination form, visit www.aami.org/awards/award_form_2013.pdf. For more information, contact Shane Osborne at +1-703-253-8273 or sosborne@aami.org.

Posted: December 18, 2012