HTM Professionals Urged to Help Develop Standards
What do clinical engineers, biomedical equipment technicians, and other healthcare technology management (HTM) professionals have to gain by getting involved in the development of standards?
A lot.
That was the message delivered by Joe Lewelling, AAMI’s vice president of standards development and emerging technology, at a session Saturday that examined how standards impact the HTM field.
“We need HTM professionals very much,” Lewelling said, noting that these men and women in the field often have the best understanding as to how medical devices and technology actually work, are usually the first to spot problems, and are thus in one of the best positions to offer solutions.
AAMI has dozens of standards committees and working groups and for many years, HTM professionals actively participated in them. While participation by medical device manufacturers remains strong, the involvement of HTM professionals in standards committees began to wane in the 1990s, Lewelling said, a result of several factors. Electromedical device technology had largely matured at that time and was stable, but complex, and the focus of standards development had shifted to the international stage.
But a changing landscape have made the contributions of HTM professionals more important than ever, Lewelling said, noting the confluence of medical device technology with information technology. Just as important, there’s an evolving and elevated role for HTM professionals in healthcare, with less emphasis on being technicians and more emphasis on technology management.
HTM professionals who get involved in standards work can see multiple benefits, Lewelling said, including:
- Having the opportunity to contribute to patient safety and public health in a new way
- Making sure that the standards that are developed support CEs and BMETs in their work
- Staying on top of technology
- Developing their careers
Robert Stiefel, a biomedical engineering consultant, underscored the message that HTM professionals stand to gain a lot by participating in the development of standards.
“You learn far more than you contribute, and your contributions are invaluable,” he said.
Standards committees are involved in a wide variety of subjects, including medical equipment management, home healthcare, risk management of networked medical devices, and software. A recent significant achievement from a standards committee was the completion of an entirely new edition of ANSI/AAMI EQ56, Recommended practice
for a medical equipment management program.
“Get this document,” urged Britton Berek, national compliance director with Sodexo Healthcare. “I think you’ll find some good and useful information in it.”
Posted: 06.01.13