An impressive lineup of healthcare technology experts and innovators, along with patient safety champions, standards volunteers, young professionals, and students received an AAMI award or scholarship at this year’s AAMI Conference & Expo.
“We are delighted to be able to recognize the outstanding achievements of each of these individuals,” said AAMI President Mary Logan. “We had some phenomenal nominees this year, and the winners reflect the depth of knowledge, commitment, and passion that exists within the healthcare technology community. Because of their contributions to the development, management, and use of healthcare technology, they have helped improve the lives of patients throughout the world.”
The 2016 AAMI Award winners are:
- The AAMI Foundation’s Laufman-Greatbatch Award: Ary L. Goldberger, M.D., Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School; Roger G. Mark, M.D., Ph.D., and George Moody from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- The AAMI Foundation & ACCE’s Robert L. Morris Humanitarian Award: Roy G. Morris, CBET, director of biomedical engineering for the International Children’s Heart Foundation in Memphis, Tennessee
- The AAMI Foundation & Institute for Technology in Health Care’s Clinical Solution Award: James Piepenbrink, director of clinical engineering and Clinical Alarm Task Force at Boston Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts
- AAMI & Becton Dickinson’s Patient Safety Award: Maria Cvach, DNP, RN, FAAN, director of policy management and integration for Johns Hopkins Health System and a clinical safety specialist for the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality in Baltimore, Maryland
- AAMI’s HTM Leadership Award: Stephen L. Grimes, FACCE, FHIMSS, FAIMBE, managing partner and principal consultant for Strategic Healthcare Technology Associates, LLC
- AAMI & GE Healthcare’s BMET of the Year Award: Carlos Villafañe, CBET, CET, a biomedical equipment technician III at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, Florida
- AAMI’s Young Professional Award: Jennifer DeFrancesco, CCE, CHTM, chief biomedical engineer for the Indianapolis VA Medical Center and VISN 10
- The Spirit of AAMI Award: Larry Hertzler, MBA, CCE, vice president of technical operations at Aramark Healthcare Technologies in Charlotte, North Carolina
The AAMI Foundation scholarship winners are:
- Sarah Brockway, who is working toward a master’s of science in biomedical engineering at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut
- Victor Makwinja, who is studying for a postgraduate diploma in healthcare technology management at the University of Cape Town in South Africa
- Jay McKinney, who is working toward a bachelor’s degree in healthcare engineering technology management at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in Indiana
- Conrad Robinson, who is working toward an associate of applied science degree in biomedical equipment technology and medical imaging certificate at Texas State Technical College in Waco, Texas
AAMI Describes Qualities It’s Looking for in Next President
AAMI is on the hunt for its next president and CEO and knows exactly what it’s looking for: a new leader who can help the association grow and thrive.
AAMI’s CEO Executive Search Committee and Korn Ferry, the global executive recruitment firm in charge of the project, have developed a detailed position description that outlines key responsibilities, year one success factors, and necessary professional experience and qualifications.
Some of these qualifications and experience include:
- A bachelor’s degree.
- A minimum of 15 years professional leadership experience in an organization of comparable size and scope.
- Proven business and financial acumen.
- Ability to effectively prioritize and balance a variety of issues and stakeholders.
- Track record for proactively addressing new opportunities and reacting to unanticipated crises or changes to the business environment that impact AAMI and/or its stakeholders.
The full position description is available at www.aami.org/CEOposition. Applications and nominations are being accepted through the Korn Ferry website. The first round of interviews is scheduled to begin in August.
AAMI Foundation Provides Framework to Help Reduce Nonactionable Clinical Alarms
The AAMI Foundation’s National Coalition for Alarm Management Safety has published a framework that it believes will provide a “consistent roadmap” for hospitals trying to reduce the number of nonactionable alarms.
The framework, which was published in the May/June 2016 issue of BI&T (Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology), AAMI’s peer-reviewed and award-winning journal, is based on the Capability Maturity Model developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and tailored to alarm management.
The framework comes at a time when health care delivery organizations are under mounting pressure to improve their alarm management practices. For example, at the start of this year, The Joint Commission began requiring hospitals to establish and implement policies and procedures for managing clinical alarms.
“Alarm fatigue is a challenging sociotechnical problem, and hospitals often do not know where to start in addressing this issue,” said James Welch, CCE, executive vice president of product development at Sotera Wireless and lead author of the BI&T paper. “The goal of the framework is to provide a consistent and repeatable methodology by which each hospital can gauge where it is in addressing alarm fatigue and thereby move closer to becoming a high-reliability organization.”
HTM professionals can play a crucial role in developing effective alarm management policies and practices, whether helping to export data from devices for reports, setting effective alarm configurations, helping clinicians understand the alarm functionality of devices, teaching them how to use the device software to customize alarms for individual patients, or sitting on their organization’s alarm management committee.