AAMI Annual Conference & Expo Opens This Weekend

The AAMI 2013 Conference & Expo is slated to kick off this Saturday, June 1, in Long Beach, CA, with a host of experts ready to discuss a range of topics of interest to the healthcare technology community and patient safety advocates everywhere.

The conference will feature more than 50 informative educational sessions covering the role of human factors in healthcare systems, safety concerns related to the use of electronic medical records, medical device interoperability, imaging, business and management, alarm management, wireless challenges, and “big picture” items, such as cybersecurity.

“We’re excited about the lineup of sessions and speakers at this year’s conference,” said AAMI President Mary Logan. “They reflect our commitment to bringing together the best minds in healthcare, information technology, the medical device industry, the regulatory world, and elsewhere, so that we can all help to advance the safe and effective use of medical technology.”

A new session, a roundtable discussion on alarm system management, has been added to the program. It will be hosted by the AAMI Foundation’s Healthcare Technology Safety Institute (HTSI) and the Healthcare Technology Foundation (HTF) and is scheduled to feature J. Tobey Clark, director of Instrumentation & Technical Services at the University of Vermont, Thomas Bauld, PhD, a biomedical engineer at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and Izabella Gieras, director of clinical technology at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, CA. The three will facilitate a discussion about The Joint Commission’s (TJC) proposed National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) on Alarm Management.  Attendees will discuss the challenges their facilities will face in meeting the goal, as well as ways HTSI and HTF can help.   

In a separate session, TJC’s George Mills will offer an update on how the NPSG and other commission initiatives will affect healthcare facilities. After the update, Mills will conduct a Q&A session, allowing attendees to ask what TJC has in store for the future.

Featured speakers at the conference include David Bates, MD, chief quality officer and senior vice president at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston; James Mault, MD, FACS, Vice President and chief medical officer, Qualcomm Life, Inc.; and Christopher Jerry, president and CEO of the Emily Jerry Foundation. Jerry’s 2-year-old daughter, Emily, died after a fatal medication error in 2006. Since then, Jerry has become a patient safety advocate.

To maintain their daily schedule, attendees can download the AAMI 2013 Mobile App for iPhones, iPads, and Androids at ativ.me/aami2013. They also can let their colleagues know what’s going on via Twitter using the hashtag #AAMI2013.

For more information about the AAMI conference, click here.

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.