We’ve seen unprecedented attention to medical-device security after an unorthodox report was recently released by short-selling investment research firm Muddy Waters Capital and MedSec, which alleged security vulnerabilities in St. Jude Medical’s pacemakers. An independent research team subsequently raised doubts about some of the clinical claims made by the report. St. Jude Medical, meanwhile, has […]
September 20, 2016
Matthew B. Weinger: Can We Make Patient-Centered Care Really Patient Centered?
If we are to move from our current provider-centered system toward a more patient-centered system of healthcare, we must understand the obstacles. The Institute of Medicine defines patient-centered care as “providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.” How […]
August 30, 2016
Donald Armstrong: Report on Metrics that Matter to Your Hospital
As healthcare technology management (HTM) professionals, we routinely report on many items. I have reported to environment of care (EOC) committees for years, and it seems that we report the same old numbers, such as preventive maintenance (PM ) completion, unable to locate, and recall rates. And while these numbers are still very valid and […]
August 29, 2016
Connor Walsh: Grow in Your Career with a Mentor
The thought of being stuck in your career is scary to fathom, yet many people feel this way at some point. Even in a field such as healthcare technology management (HTM), which offers endless opportunities to grow, one still can feel overwhelmed and can be curious as to “what’s next” in terms of personal and […]
August 23, 2016
William Hyman: Do We Know How to Evaluate and Compare Risks and Benefits?
It is well known that few things in life are risk free and that we therefore take on risk whenever we seek the benefits of healthcare. This leads to the straightforward notion that we should evaluate risks and benefits, and then compare them in order to make a rational decision about undertaking the activity. While […]
August 4, 2016
Mary Logan: Warning, Warning! Systems Overload
AAMI has been trying to collect examples of real-life systems issues involving healthcare technology to help our community better address the increasingly complex challenges of modern healthcare. It has been incredibly difficult to collect such examples, much more difficult than we had ever imagined. At first, we thought it was because subject experts were just […]
August 3, 2016
Barrett Franklin: I Love Technology, but It Isn’t Always the Answer
Until recently, the daily management of healthcare technology was my core focus, having served as chief clinical engineer for the VA New England Healthcare System. When I stepped into a new role as deputy network director for that system—a position with a more global focus—I was struck by how often I had fallen victim to […]
July 29, 2016
Jennifer DeFrancesco: The Rise of Sustained Chronic Disease Modalities and Why HTM Should Be Watching
During a recent trip to South America, I was taken with the fresh fruit that street vendors sold all day. I couldn’t wait to run into one of the pineapple vendors to get a slice. That week it dawned on me that I’ve never seen a street fruit vendor in the United States. Furthermore, the […]
July 8, 2016
Mary Logan: What the Joys of a Summer Vacation Taught Me about Work
Having just come home from a two-week vacation, I’m recommitted to applying some of the joys of a summer vacation to lighten up the weightiness of work responsibilities: Learn something new every day. One of the joys of vacation for me is tapping into learning something new every day. It might be reading a great […]
July 5, 2016
Jim Piepenbrink: How Do You Handle Tough Healthcare Technology Challenges?
At the AAMI Annual Conference & Expo last month, I was very fortunate to participate in a workshop on alarm management that was presented by the AAMI Foundation and the Healthcare Technology Foundation. At the beginning of the workshop, all of the AAMI Foundation’s patient safety initiatives were profiled. A new one is set to […]
September 23, 2016
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