Editorial Board for AAMI Journal Awards Top Honors

Contact:  Gavin Stern, gstern@aami.org, 703-647-2781

A duo of clinical engineers, a multidisciplinary team focused on patient safety, three directors at the MedStar Health National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, and an innovative biomedical services team have been recognized for their outstanding contributions to AAMI’s peer-reviewed journal, BI&T (Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology), and its twice-yearly supplement, Horizons.

“This year’s winning submissions, as selected by the BI&T Editorial Board, are a microcosm of some of the big issues that are shaping healthcare technology, namely the importance of medical device cybersecurity and electronic health record (EHR) design, as well as the role of technology in improving patient safety and outcomes,” said Managing Editor Joe Sheffer.

The winners will be formally recognized during a ceremony at the AAMI 2018 Conference & Expo in Long Beach, CA, on June 2. The conference will run June 1–4.

Best Article

This honor was awarded to Mike Busdicker, system director of clinical engineering support services at Intermountain Healthcare in Midvale, UT, and Priyanka Upendra, compliance manager for clinical engineering support services at Intermountain, for their article "The Role of Healthcare Technology Management in Facilitating Medical Device Cybersecurity," which was published in the fall 2017 issue of Horizons. By outlining best practices, as well as processes from their own organization, Busdicker and Upendra described the instrumental role HTM professionals play in managing the security of medical devices and in ensuring that patient data—and patient lives—are protected.

Best Research Paper

For this award, Editorial Board members selected a paper published in the May/June 2017 issue of BI&T: "Continuous Surveillance of Sleep Apnea Patients in a Medical-Surgical Unit." The authors—a team from Virtua Health and Bernoulli Enterprise, Inc.—conducted two studies to identify the utility and practical implementation of continuous capnography monitoring for patients who were recovering from surgery, focusing specifically on techniques to differentiate actionable from nonactionable alarms. This paper is an important contribution to the literature on safe and effective methods for detecting opioid-induced respiratory depression.

The writing team consisted of Dana Supe, MD, program director for clinical patient safety at Virtua Health and medical director of operations at Virtua Memorial Hospital of Burlington County; Leah Baron, MD, chief of the department of anesthesiology at Virtua Memorial Hospital; Tom Decker, a systems integration architect for Virtua Health; Kyle Parker, a systems integrator for Virtua Health; Jeanne Venella, RN, chief nursing officer for Bernoulli; Sarah Williams, a senior product manager for Bernoulli; Kari Beaton, RN, director of enterprise solutions for Bernoulli; and John Zaleski, chief analytics officer for Bernoulli.

Best Commentary

This honor went to a team from the MedStar Health National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare in Washington, DC, for "EHR Usability: Get It Right from the Start." In this article published in the May/June 2017 issue of BI&T, Kathryn M. Kellogg, MD, associate medical director; Rollin J. Fairbanks, MD, founding director; and Raj M. Ratwani, scientific director of the center, focused on the importance of supporting the cognitive needs of clinicians—as well as considering workflow issues and the clinical environment—during the initial design of EHR systems. “However difficult, this undertaking is an essential step toward EHR excellence, ensuring patient safety, and finally getting rid of those paper sticky notes,” they wrote.

Bright Ideas Award

In each issue of BI&T, AAMI highlights how one healthcare facility or system implemented a novel approach to tackling a specific healthcare technology-related problem or established a new process that contributed to improved patient care. The “bright ideas” featured in this section are selected by AAMI’s Technology Management Council (TMC). The TMC then chooses one program to receive its annual Bright Ideas Award.

This year’s award went to the Biomedical Services Department at Lexington Medical Center based in West Columbia, SC, for its simple solution for keeping track of the facility’s 540 physiologic monitoring command modules. By developing the color-coded system detailed in the September/October 2017 issue of BI&T, each department in the hospital could easily identify its modules, ensuring that the equipment was programmed with the correct settings and alarm parameters.

AAMI (www.aami.org) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1967. It is a diverse community of more than 10,000 healthcare technology professionals united by one important mission—supporting the healthcare community in the development, management, and use of safe and effective health technology. AAMI is the primary source of consensus standards, both national and international, for the medical device industry, as well as practical information, support, and guidance for health technology and sterilization professionals.