By AAMI
Winners of AAMI’s High School Essay Contest
This year’s three winners of AAMI’s annual high school essay contest shared moving stories about the positive impact healthcare technology has had on their lives and the lives of their families.
The essay contest is part of AAMI’s Healthcare Technology Management (HTM) Week festivities and is designed to help spread awareness about HTM to and encourage students to consider pursuing a career in the field. AAMI’s Technology Management Council (TMC) selected the three winners from nearly 100 applicants: Ashlin Pfeifer-Winborn, first place, $500; Morgan Reupke, second place, $300; and Shiven Balaji, third place, $100.
“Members of the TMC were very impressed with this year’s submissions. The essays were thoughtful and covered many different types of healthcare technology and devices. AAMI staff will follow up with all students to encourage them to consider HTM as a career option,” said Danielle McGeary, vice president of HTM at AAMI.
‘Must-Have’ TIR24971 Complements Risk Management Standard
A long-awaited technical information report (TIR) that provides state-of-the-art guidance on applying a fundamental risk management standard has just been published.
Already, AAMI/ISO TIR24971:2020, Medical devices—Guidance on the application of ISO 14971, has been a hot seller as a draft document. The TIR offers guidance on management responsibilities, components of a risk management plan, and the risk analysis and evaluation process. It is a companion piece intended to be used and applied together with the standard, ANSI/AAMI/ISO 14971:2019, Medical devices—Application of risk management to medical devices, which establishes a process for medical device manufacturers to identify, evaluate and manage risk.
However, the standard and its guidance report aren’t just useful for medical device manufacturers – they can be used to manage all risks, including those related to security and usability.“This standard and TIR contain a very clear concept of systematic risk management. Any user of medical devices can use this process to develop a risk management system for their organization when the focus is on patient, user property, or environment safety,” said Tina Krenc, principal consultant for KTA Compliance Consulting, lead instructor for AAMI’s industry training course on Integrating Risk Management into the Product Life Cycle, and a member of the joint working group.
For more information, visit www.aami.org/TIR24971.
AAMI Mourns Loss of Noted Clinical Engineer George Panagiotopoulos
George Panagiotopoulos, dedicated clinical engineer, passed away on May 24 at the age of 60.
Panagiotopoulos started his professional life in banking but found his true calling in clinical engineering. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in clinical science from California State University, San Francisco, and spent more than two decades working in biomedical and clinical engineering, including several positions within Kaiser Permanente’s National Clinical Technology Program. After taking early medical retirement two years ago, he remained active professionally by partnering with colleagues to start AdaptivMD, a telehealth and biometric data company.
“George was welcoming to newcomers and forever supportive of his friends and colleagues. He exemplified the concept of lifelong learning more than anyone I’ve ever met,” shared Carol Davis-Smith, vice chair of clinical engineering on AAMI’s Board of Directors. “George shared ideas freely and listened intently to the ideas of others. He was a dedicated and compassionate son, father and husband. I know because we spoke often about our families and raising our kids in a complicated world. I am a better person for having known him.”
Panagiotopoulos was a member of AAMI’s Healthcare Technology Management (HTM) Benchmarking Task Force, which published the second edition of the HTM Benchmarking Guide in 2018. He also contributed articles to AAMI publications, including the peer-reviewed journal BI&T. Panagiotopoulos was involved with technology standards-setting groups and was a past member of the American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE) Board of Directors.
AAMI Foundation Awards 2020 Research Grants
The AAMI Foundation has named the 2020 recipients of the Mary K. Logan Research Award Program. Two grants, worth a total of more than $119,000, will support research initiatives that focus on improving patient safety and eliminating morbidity and mortality associated with the use of healthcare technology. The awards include:
A $69,565 grant to a research team at George Washington University, led by Ekundayo Shittu, assistant professor of engineering management and systems engineering. The group will explore the potential impact of utilization-based alternative equipment maintenance (AEM) programs. With the funding received by the AAMI Foundation, Shittu and his team are developing a software tool that will enable others in the HTM community to evaluate the effect their AEM programs have on patient safety, equipment availability and cost reduction.
A $50,000 grant to Poching DeLaurentis at Purdue University will help fund research that focuses on collecting data from smart infusion pumps and collaborates with clinicians who use them daily. DeLaurentis and her team aim to design and implement an infusion safety dashboard on the community-supported Regenstrief National Center for Medical Device Informatics (REMEDI) web portal (CatalyzeCare.org). It will be powered by computational algorithms that evaluate infusion data from smart infusion pumps. DeLaurentis expects that the research will influence future smart pump management as well as device design and requirement.
“The AAMI Foundation is pleased to support these important research initiatives this year, and anxious to share the results of the researchers’ work with the entire health care community,” said Steve Campbell, executive director of the AAMI Foundation. “Competition for this year’s research funding was strong, but these two grant submissions stood out because of the depth and importance of the topics and the impressive proposals put forth by the researchers.”
The awards program, which was named in honor of AAMI’s former president and CEO, was established in 2016 with a gift from the association’s board of directors.
For more information, visit www.AAMIFoundation.org.