By Steven J. Yelton P.E., AAMIF
As I often mention, educators strive to produce the best HTM program possible. We want our program to be great! This is also true of HTM programs in hospitals. As I write this column, I’m on my way home from the 2023 AAMI eXchange. One of the most exciting initiatives that I heard about at the eXchange, in my opinion, is the re-energized focus on HTM standards.
Have you thought of how you could use standards in your day-to-day work to improve outcomes? You may ask, “Why are standards important and, really, what are standards?”
AAMI has been working to enhance its standards department. One new hire is Michael Miskell. He is excited to be working on HTM standards which includes the standard for HTM educational programs. After reading this article, if you are interested in getting more information on the standards process or volunteering to work on any of these standards, please email him at mmiskell@aami.org.
As educators, we strive to make our programs better by sharing and using available resources. We are also looking for new and better ways to enhance the learning experience.
As most of you may remember, AAMI is the lead society for the Technology Accreditation Commission of The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (TAC-ABET). This society accredits HTM educational programs at the associate and baccalaureate level. AAMI strives to help programs achieve the level needed to secure accreditation by ABET. The programs accredited by ABET are exemplary programs and adhere to the high standards required.
AAMI has developed, or is working on developing, five HTM standards. These standards come under the Equipment (EQ) committee and are called EQ standards. The standards include ones that address the following areas: HTM program management, servicing vocabulary, technology acquisition, alternative equipment maintenance (AEM) and HTM educational programs. Some additional AAMI standards committees needing HTM expertise are: Quality Management (QM) and Software and Information Technology (SM). I feel that these standards will be important to HTM programs within hospitals as well as HTM educational programs.
I just participated in a standards session at the exchange led by two standards giants, Janet Prust and Ralph Basile. They were very helpful in answering many of my standards questions. Here is some of what they said. First, they defined a standard: “A standard is developed within a standards development organization (SDO). It is norms or requirements including uniform criteria, methods, processes and practices.” In general, standards enable products or services to effectively work together by defining common interfaces and protocols. Standards provide quality assurance; efficiency and cost reduction; innovation and competition as well as facilitating global collaboration.
Janet and Ralph did mention that one of the biggest challenges with EQ standards are finding panelists. With your help, we can quickly eliminate that.
Now, I would like to focus a bit on the educational standard. A little history on the HTM educational standard. We have found that not all HTM educational programs are interested in becoming accredited by ABET, but they still want to adhere to some standard of excellence for HTM programs. That’s perfectly OK. To that end, AAMI is working on a standard for HTM programs called EQ110. I am one of the co-chairs of the working group for this standard along with James Linton.
We are interested in having additional volunteers work on this standard or one of the others. These volunteers include, but are not limited to, educators. We would also like end users such as employers in all areas of HTM to help. In the educator’s luncheon at the AAMI eXchange (with also included non-educators), much interest was expressed in this standard. We agreed that a good standard needs input from all factions of users, not just the educators. I find this diverse group of professionals to be very informative – akin to our advisory committee meetings at the college. Without them, our program would not be nearly as good.
This standard is intended to be an entry level standard for HTM educational programs. Programs which reach the level of this standard may still elect to advance to achieve TAC-ABET accreditation. With that said, programs with TAC-ABET accreditation should also make sure that they comply with the AAMI, HTM Standard for Educational Programs. We hope to have some guidance documents available along the way as we develop this standard. Stay tuned!
– Steven J. Yelton, P.E., AAMIF; is a senior HTM engineer for a large health network in Cincinnati, Ohio and is a professor emeritus at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College where he teaches biomedical instrumentation (HTM) courses.
