The AAMI 2015 Annual Conference & Expo, an unrivaled event for healthcare technology management (HTM) professionals, had a banner year with more than 2,000 people registering for the event – a new record.
The Denver event, AAMI’s 49th annual conference, featured a wealth of education sessions and speakers.
The event kicked off with an opening general session from cybersecurity expert Billy Rios, co-founder of Laconicly, which provides training and professional security services. He warned that attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
“I’ve been attacking and defending computers all of my adult life,” said Rios. “But this is definitely a young person’s game, and it’s hard to keep up. You will face someone better than I.”
Tejal Gandhi, M.D., president and chief executive officer of the National Patient Safety Foundation, spoke during the Dwight E. Harken Memorial Lecture, saying that while it is a given that patient safety is an important aspect of health care delivery, more work remains to be done to ensure that optimal care is delivered.
“We really need to change the culture in health care so people are comfortable speaking up,” Gandhi said.
Asking patients what is important to them can go a long way toward improving clinical outcomes and helping in the management of chronic conditions, she added. She detailed four other potential areas for improvement: care across the continuum, the workforce, transparency and metrics, and the use of health information technology.
On the final day of the conference, George Mills, director of the Department of Engineering at The Joint Commission, told a packed room that healthcare technology management (HTM) professionals can play a key role in curbing an easily preventable cause of patient deaths.
According to Mills, 770,000 patients are affected by hospital-acquired infections each year. Of that number, approximately 80,000 die. “Who thinks that’s an acceptable number?” he asked.
While it may seem like a simple solution, hand hygiene can play a major role in preventing these infections, he said. This emphasis needs to be ingrained in the culture of HTM departments, he stressed.
Mills also described the use of predictive medical equipment maintenance, saying it could be a big help to busy HTM professionals.
In terms of equipment maintenance strategies, Mills recommended starting with manufacturer recommendations as a baseline, then revising as needed from that point, with the key caveat that the process used is “defensible.”
Although Mills noted that predictive maintenance can be a boon for HTM professionals, it cannot be viewed as simply a “set it and forget it” type of action; predictive maintenance strategies require ongoing re-evaluation and follow-up.
AAMI Publications, Blog Score Awards
Capping off a record-breaking year, AAMI has won honors for publication excellence in a nationwide competition that drew more than 1,800 entries.
The Awards for Publication Excellence (APEX), bestowed by Communications Concepts, Inc., pay tribute to publishers, editors, writers and designers who create print, Web, electronic and social media. The organization, which advises publication and communications program on best practices, honored AAMI with three awards this year. Combined with the results of two other national competitions for publications and social media resources, AAMI has collected eight awards this year – the most ever.
“We’re delighted that our publications and resources are winning national recognition,” said Sean Loughlin, AAMI’s vice president of communications. “Our staff editors know that these resources are important to our members, and we want to give them the best content possible. It’s important to note that our publications rely heavily on the contributions of many volunteers in the AAMI community, and we are so grateful for their efforts.”
In the APEX competition, AAMI News took honors in the one- to two-person produced newsletter category. BI&T (Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology), AAMI’s peer-reviewed journal, won for an interview with Ann Prestipino, senior vice president with Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. In her moving interview, she recounted the day of the Boston Marathon bombings and how her facility dealt with the flood of patients. Finally, AAMI’s social media efforts also were recognized, with the AAMIBlog taking honors for the best series of blog posts with the following entries:
• Technology Alone Is Not the Answer for Effective Patient Monitoring
• Why Is the ‘System’ Such a Challenge for Healthcare?
• Learning from Nonactionable Clinical Alarms
Word of the honors came about two weeks after Association Media & Publishing recognized AAMI’s podcast series with an EXCEL Award. Those awards pay tribute to excellence and leadership in nonprofit association media, publishing, marketing, and communications. In less than a year, the series, developed in partnership with the studios of Healthcare Tech Talk, and has covered a range of topics, including risk management, preventive maintenance, and sterilization challenges in the wake of the Ebola outbreak.
Last month, AAMI took home four awards from the American Society of Healthcare Publication Editors (ASHPE) contest, which recognizes “excellence in publications development and editorial performance.” BI&T nabbed two awards, while AAMI News and Horizons, a biannual supplement to BI&T, each earned one.
This is not the first time AAMI publications picked up multiple awards in a single year. Last year, AAMI picked up six awards in two national competitions, including four from ASHPE.
