AAMI Technical Committee Award

Awarded to up to two AAMI technical committees (includes AAMI technical committees and working groups, and AAMI technical advisory groups and technical advisory sub-groups) annually to recognize outstanding Committee efforts. Nominations may be submitted by any member of the AAMI Board of Directors, Committee on Standards Strategy, Standards Board, or by any member of AAMI or any member of an AAMI committee. Selection is by the AAMI Standards Board based on the nomination report. Committee members [based on membership status at the time the award is announced] receive a plaque and the Committee is further rewarded with a special luncheon, dinner or similar event at their next meeting. Up to five former committee members may also be nominated to receive a plaque for past outstanding contributions to the work of the committee. In addition, Committee cochairs are invited to the AAMI Annual Meeting to accept the award on behalf of the committee in a public presentation.

Guidelines for Nominations:

Interested committees and working groups are encouraged to prepare and submit a report to AAMI using the following outline: At least one of the documents forming the basis of the nomination must have been approved in the previous 12 months to the date the nomination is submitted.

Committee information

• Name of AAMI Technical Committee or Working Group
• Contact information for the current chair(s) (name, company, address, phone, and email).

Basis for the Award

• Please describe the importance of the contributions, benefits and effects that resulted/will result from the work of this committee (e.g., contribution to patient safety, international trade, etc), the efficient/effective operations of the committee and/or other factors that should be taken into considered in the evaluation of this committees work.
• Please describe any other committee activities that the selection committee should take into account in deciding on the award, such as assisting AAMI with educational courses related to the standard(s), authoring articles about the standard or technology covered by the committee, commenting on standards of other organizations, etc.

Nominator Contact Information:

Include name, company, address, phone, email, and signature.

Submit your nomination here. Deadline for submissions is January 11, 2021 EXTENDED! January 18, 2021. For more information, contact awards@aami.org.

2021 Winner:

This year’s recipient, the AAMI COVID-19 Response Team, is a particularly poignant example of how these committees serve as a guiding light for the greater healthcare technology community.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published numerous emergency use authorizations for new medical device designs intended for emergency use. This created an opportunity to innovate for passionate engineers looking to help hospitals and their patients, but it also created something of a ‘wild west’ for medical device design.

That is why AAMI began recruiting experts from existing committees to create a multi-stakeholder task force, which AAMI called the COVID-19 Response Team. Engineers, regulators, industry representatives, researchers, and clinicians volunteered long hours to create a new suite of rapid response AAMI standards documents, called consensus reports (CRs). Seventeen CRs and related support documents have been written since the Response Team began their work. They serve as clearly written and freely available guidelines for innovators, providing best practices for the design, testing, and basic safety of ventilatory devices, hospital room remote controls, emergency resuscitator systems, and much more.

“We are not dictating medical practice,” said Response Team member Bob Kopotic, senior manager of clinical affairs for critical care at Edwards Lifesciences. “We’re working to make sure that a good clinician is not going to hurt somebody with a device that has been inappropriately designed.”

“In this extraordinary time, we saw an urgent need for a group of experts representing many facets of the healthcare sector to come together to provide much-sought technical guidance, advice, and problem-solving,” added co-chair Julian Goldman. “This group of problem-solvers had a far-reaching charge, ‘just do whatever it takes.’ And that’s what we have done.”