AAMI Honors Healthcare Technology’s Best and Brightest
An impressive lineup of healthcare technology experts and innovators, along with clinicians, patient safety champions, standards volunteers, young professionals and students received an AAMI award or scholarship at this year’s AAMI Exchange, the name for the association’s growing and revamped annual conference and expo. The honors recognize the leadership, dedication and contributions these individuals have made to the association and their wider professional community.
AAMI President and CEO Robert Jensen said the winners represent the best in health technology.
“Collectively and individually, these professionals are helping advance the cause of safe and effective health technology,” Jensen said. “They push all of us to aim higher and find innovative solutions to the challenges we face. It is AAMI’s great pleasure to honor and thank them for their achievements and extraordinary work.”
The 2019 AAMI award winners were:
- The AAMI Foundation’s Laufman-Greatbatch Award: Lawana Bryan, Carol Means, Tim Rausch, Tina Hayes, Penny Robertson and Christina Van Den Handel, Northeast Georgia Health System
- The AAMI Foundation & ACCE’s Robert L. Morris Humanitarian Award: William Gentles, BT Medical Technology Consulting
- The AAMI Foundation & Institute for Technology in Health Care’s Clinical Solution Award: JoAnne Phillips, Virtua Health System
- AAMI & Becton Dickinson’s Patient Safety Award: Shelly Crisler and Katrina Jacobs, Department of Veterans Affairs
- AAMI’s HTM Leadership Award: Heidi Horn, SSM Health
- AAMI & GE Healthcare’s BMET of the Year Award: Jovito “Jojo” Gonzales, Kaiser Permanente Hospital
- AAMI’s Young Professional Award: Benjamin Esslinger, Franciscan Alliance
- The Spirit of AAMI Award: Paul W. Kelley, Washington Hospital Healthcare System
- AAMI HTM Association of the Year Award: Colorado Association of Biomedical Equipment Technicians
- Standards Developer Award: Bruce S. Alpert, University of Tennessee Health Science Center (retired); Richard Dart, Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation; Nupur Jain, Intuitive Surgical; John Murray, Food and Drug Administration (retired); Rose Seavey, Seavey Healthcare Consulting, LLC
- AAMI Technical Committee Award: AAMI’s ECG Committee
- AAMI Foundation Scholarship: Lauryn Carr, Mississippi State University; Rebecca Halmich, University of Connecticut; Anas Mahmoud, Texas State Technical College; Moses Suherman, Southern California Institute of Technology; Angie Thai, University of Washington; Bianca Wyman, University of Connecticut
- Bright Ideas Award (selected by AAMI’s Technology Management Council): The biomedical engineering technology program at St. Philips College in San Antonio, TX
During a special ceremony at the AAMI Exchange, three ‘best of’ articles published in AAMI’s peer-reviewed journal, BI&T, were also honored:
- Best Article: “A Rational Approach to Efficient Equipment Maintenance, Part 1: A Simple, Basic AEM Program” by Malcolm Ridgway, retired; Matthew Baretich, Baretich Engineering; Matthew Clark, Advocate Health; Stephen Grimes, Strategic Health Care Technology Associates; Bhaskar Iduri, Renovo Solutions; Michael W. Lane, University of Vermont; Alan Lipschultz, HealthCare Technology Consulting; and Nancy Lum, Massachusetts General Hospital
- Best Research Paper: “Frequency and Duration of Infusion Pump Alarms: Establishing National Benchmarks” by Rachel R. Vitoux, Catherine Schuster, Kevin R. Glover, and Mark Dekker from B. Braun Medical Inc.
- Best Commentary: “Keeping Track of All the Moving Pieces” by Symantec’s Axel Wirth
For more information about the AAMI Awards Program visit at www.aami.org/awards.
New AAMI Podcast Focuses on Role of Standards in AI Regulation
The expanded use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies in health care poses a challenge for regulators, but a new regulatory paradigm isn’t what is needed, according to the most recent episode of AAMI’s award-winning podcast.
“There tends to be a lot of mystery around AI, like it’s out of a science fiction movie,” Pat Baird, head of global software standards at Philips, explained during episode 29 of the AAMI Podcast. “But the good practices needed for AI development are already very similar to existing good practices.”
For example, a standard designed for handling animal tissues can be applied to the controls needed to ensure that AI data is high quality and comes from a reliable source. The standard also provides principles for testing the tissue – or in this case AI data – to ensure that it’s valid. And, just like physical items, data needs to be stored properly.
“These are all concepts that we’re already familiar with, but we never thought of applying them to AI,” Baird said.
