By K. Richard Douglas
California is the third largest U.S. state and has had statehood since 1850. The Golden State offers visitors many experiences, from strolling through a redwood forest, to enjoying the beaches near San Diego and hiking in Lake Tahoe.
Some of the images in the state best known to tourists are the cable cars in San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. Along with many of the leading tech companies, these well-known attractions can be found in the bay area of northern California.
While the bay area of California is best known for its namesake San Francisco, it also includes many cities that have become famous due to the emergence of high-tech, including Palo Alto, Mountain View and Menlo Park. The region is also known for many prominent hospitals and health care systems.
Managing the medical equipment at these institutions are the HTM professionals in the bay area. Joined by employees of ISOs and third-party medical supply companies, many are members of the California Medical Instrumentation Association (CMIA). The association is broken down into eight local chapters, reflecting the enormity of the state.
The chapter that serves the biomeds and medical device vendors in the region around the San Francisco Bay is the CMIA Bay Area chapter.
“This year the Bay Area Chapter is focusing on quality local presenters, bringing great minds, experiences and learning opportunities together. We want to bring in non-corporate, local presenters and educators in efforts to bring a more communal sense of professionalism to our group,” says Bill Lesch, the chapter’s president.
Besides Lesch, chapter officers include Vice President Jamie Piceno, Secretary Anthony Faddis, Treasurer Jacob Freedman and Board Member Renato Castro.
Like many organizations, including HTM associations, the opportunity to hold in-person meetings and other activities had been restricted during the pandemic. The CMIA Bay Area Chapter holds regular meetings and allows those not able to attend to participate virtually.
“Our Bay Area chapter meetings are held every third Wednesday of every even month. We had our first online simulcast and are prepping to have an interactive simulcast for future meetings,” Lesch says.
The group held an in-person meeting on February 16, 2022.
“Our last meeting titled ‘Clinical Engineering and Project Management – Cohesion and Coordination,’ was comprised of five local industry leaders in a panel discussion. We had it over dinner and drinks – 75 people attended and it was a hit,” Lesch says.
The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts
Along with the seven other chapters, the Bay Area Chapter is part of a nonprofit organization that unites HTM professionals around the state of California. It has a code of ethics and its own board of directors.
The CMIA statewide biomed association has been in operation since 1972. CMIA incorporated in 1992. There are over 54 meetings a year across the eight chapters. During the pandemic, the organization moved to virtual meetings.
CMIA holds an annual conference that includes an awards banquet.
Along with the statewide group, the Bay Area chapter will be a part of the CMIA Connect 2022 conference on September 30 and October 1, 2022. The annual conference will feature 30 educational sessions with CEUs offered, a three-day exhibit hall with 75 participating vendors, keynote speakers, networking events and an awards dinner.
The conference will also include an Outreach event, targeting junior high and high school students to learn more about the biomed field, according to the CMIA website.
The Connect Conference will be held at the Sheraton Grand Sacramento Hotel.
While the Bay Area Chapter does not individually offer a scholarship program, the state-wide group does. That program is called the Frank Yip Scholarship. The scholarship was established in 1998 to honor the memory of Frank Yip, who was the owner of FYE Medical, a medical equipment distributor. Yip was very active in the biomed community and participated in the formation of the Bay Area chapter. He also served on the board of directors.
In officers today, the chapter looks for someone capable of managing chapter funds, someone who can curate presentation topics and speakers and engage chapter members with industry news and content. They should be able to represent the Bay Area chapter in state meetings and the CMIA annual Connect Conference, which will all lead to becoming a leader in the local HTM community.
One of the action items on the group’s agenda for this year is to establish closer ties with local technical schools and colleges. It is also doing its part to increase active participation in the biomed community.
“Our goal is to always increase membership for our chapter, and most important, interest in our profession,” Lesch said.
He says the group will accomplish this through reaching out to the local colleges and inviting newly graduated students; even from high schools.
“We feel that through excitable presenters, sharing the multiple facets of this industry, fun locations, serving good food and genuinely showing we care; will show a community worth being part of,” Lesch says.
With the pandemic morphing into an endemic, a return to a more normal agenda for all biomed societies and associations will be possible. That will allow members of the CMIA Bay Area chapter to return to networking and rubbing elbows and welcoming new members.
The return to normal will also allow the Bay Area members to join their biomed colleagues from around the third-largest state in the fall at the group’s biggest annual event.
The city by the bay, and adjacent cities, will see biomeds leaving Zoom meetings behind and re-energizing the Bay Area chapter going forward.