The future of clinical engineering: the challenge of change

Medical Device Integration Model Based on the Internet of Things

At present, hospitals in our country have basically established the HIS system, which manages registration, treatment, and charge, among many others, of patients. During treatment, patients need to use medical devices repeatedly to acquire all sorts of inspection data. Currently, the output data of the medical devices are often manually input into information system, which is easy to get wrong or easy to cause mismatches between inspection reports and patients. For some small hospitals of which information construction is still relatively weak, the information generated by the devices is still presented in the form of paper reports. When doctors or patients want to have access to the data at a given time again, they can only look at the paper files. Data integration between medical devices has long been a difficult problem for the medical information system, because the data from medical devices are lack of mandatory unified global standards and have outstanding heterogeneity of devices. In order to protect their own interests, manufacturers use special protocols, etc., thus causing medical decices to still be the "lonely island" of hospital information system. Besides, unfocused application of the data will lead to failure to achieve a reasonable distribution of medical resources. With the deepening of IT construction in hospitals, medical information systems will be bound to develop towards mobile applications, intelligent analysis, and interconnection and interworking, on the premise that there is an effective medical device integration (MDI) technology. To this end, this paper presents a MDI model based on the Internet of Things (IoT). Through abstract classification, this model is able to extract the common characteristics of the devices, resolve the heterogeneous differences between them, and employ a unified protocol to integrate data between devices. And by the IoT technology, it realizes interconnection network of devices and conducts associate matching between the data and the inspected at the device terminal in a timely manner.

Overview of Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical Engineering is a branch that unites engineering methods with biological and medical sciences in order to enhance the quality of our lives. It focuses on understanding intricate systems of living organisms, and on technology development, algorithms, methods, and advanced medical knowledge, while enhancing the conveyance and success of clinical medicine. With engineering principles, biomedical engineering improves the procedures and devices to overcome health care and medical problems by combining both biology and medicine with engineering principals. In the field of Biomedical Engineering, engineers usually need to have background knowledge from such different fields of engineering as electronics, mechanical, and chemical engineering. Specialties in this field like bioinstrumentation, biomechanics, biomaterials, medical imagining, clinical engineering, bioinformatics, telemedicine and rehabilitation engineering, which will be introduced in this chapter together with an overview of the field of biomedical engineering.

Clinical needs finding: developing the virtual experience-a case study

We describe an innovative program at the University of California, Davis for students to engage in clinical needs finding. Using a team-based approach, students participated in clinical rotations to observe firsthand the needs of clinicians at the university affiliated medical center. The teams were asked to develop documentary-style videos to capture key experiences that would allow future viewers to use the videos as "virtual" clinical rotations. This was conceived as a strategy to allow students in prohibitively large classes, or students in programs at institutions without associated medical or veterinary school programs, to experience clinical rotations and perform needs assessments. The students' perspectives on the experience as well as instructor analysis of best practices for this type of activity are presented and discussed. We found that the internship experience was valuable to the students participating, by not only introducing the practice of needs finding but also increasing the students' confidence in the practice of engineering design and their ability to work independently. The videos produced were of such high quality that instructors from other institutions have requested copies for instructional use. Virtual clinical rotations through video experiences may provide a reasonable substitute for students who do not have the ability to participate in rotations in person.

Supporting clinical engineering in Italy: results of a survey conducted by the AIIC

This article presents the outcomes of a survey developed and conducted by the Italian Association of Clinical Engineers (AIIC) in 2010 [1]. The AIIC, affiliated with the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE) since 2003, conducted this in-depth survey to investigate the educational profile of clinical engineers (CEs) as well as the activities and organization of clinical engineering departments (CEDs) in Italy. The survey consisted of a six-section questionnaire designed by the AIIC Board, which was based on other previous international surveys of CEDs. The questionnaire was sent to the AIIC members and to the most important Italian health-care organizations.

A multi agent system model for evaluating quality service of Clinical Engineering Department

Biomedical technology is strategically important to the operational effectiveness of healthcare facilities. As a consequence, clinical engineers have become an essential figure in hospital environment: their role in maintenance, support, evaluation, integration, assessment of new, advanced and complex technologies in point of view of patient safety and cost reduction is become inalienable. For this reason, nations have begun to establish Clinical Engineering Department, but, unfortunately, in a very diversified and fragmented way. So, a tool able to evaluate and improve the quality of current services is needed. Hence, this work builds a model that acts as a reference tool in order to assess the quality of an existing Clinical Engineering Department, underlining its defaulting aspects and suggesting improvements.

Knowledge network for medical technology management in Mexico

OBJECTIVES

The role of biomedical engineers (BMEs) has changed widely over the years, from managing a group of technicians to the planning of large installations and the management of medical technology countrywide. As the technology has advanced, the competence of BMEs has been challenged because it is no longer possible to be an expert in every component of the technology involved in running a hospital. Our approach has been to form a network of professionals that are experts in different fields related to medical technology, where work is coordinated to provide high quality services at the planning and execution stages of projects related to medical technology.

METHODS

A study of the procedures involved in the procurement of medical technology has been carried out over the years. These experiences have been compared with several case studies where the approach to problem solving in this area has been multidisciplinary. Planning and execution phases of projects involving medical technology management have been identified.

RESULTS

After several instances of collaboration among experts from different fields, a network for management of healthcare technology has been formed at our institution that incorporates the experience from different departments that were dealing separately with projects involving medical technology.

CONCLUSIONS

This network has led us to propose this approach to solve medical technology management projects, where the strengths of each subgroup complement each other. This structure will lead to a more integrated approach to healthcare technology management and will ensure higher quality solutions.

A model for simulation of Clinical Engineering Department activities

Clinical Engineering (CE) Departments are in charge of healthcare technology management in healthcare facilities. The workload is proportional to the number of activities, the number and complexity of biomedical instrumentation, and the technology intensity of the facility. Clinical engineers and Biomedical equipment technicians work together in order to perform the different activities and to obtain customer satisfaction. This paper describes a model that can be used to estimate the number of engineers and technicians required to start a new CE Department. The estimation is obtained by means of simulation. Starting by several inputs that describe the facility and the quantity and characteristics of the instruments the model is able to provide the number of Clinical engineers and Biomedical equipment technicians.

Evaluating alternative service contracts for medical equipment

Managing medical equipments is a formidable task that has to be pursued maximizing the benefits within a highly regulated and cost-constrained environment. Clinical engineers are uniquely equipped to determine which policies are the most efficacious and cost effective for a health care institution to ensure that medical devices meet appropriate standards of safety, quality and performance. Part of this support is a strategy for preventive and corrective maintenance. This paper describes an alternative scheme of OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) service contract for medical equipment that combines manufacturers' technical support and in-house maintenance. An efficient and efficacious organization can reduce the high cost of medical equipment maintenance while raising reliability and quality. Methodology and results are discussed.

Using web technique in the managing regulatory requirements of medical equipment for the nursing department

The centralized and information management are in common use technique of modern management. The management of the medical equipment emphasized in the purchase and the maintenance management in early days,and cost down now is import factor for medical equipment management because the health insurance system causes the hospital budget reduced, so in the cost down strategy is to reduce the amount of money and promoting the efficient of use . Another important subject in medical equipment management is patient safety, so how to ensuring the quality of medical equipment is also having to notice. In the paper, we will provide an architecture for assistant the nursing department to develop a information system on the centralized and information management of valuable medical equipment. Through the system operation we hope can promote the effect and the quality of the medical equipment usage. This system implement up to now has more than half a year, and could acquired some concrete result: the utilization rate promotes doubly, the rate of breaking downs, the borrowed time cuts 75%, the cost downs for equipment purchase and satisfaction increases for user. In this paper, in addition to explaining the above-mentioned result,also discusses the design principle and structure on the whole system. We hope the protocol could be used as for clinical unit to control their valuable equipments and match the authority expectation.