very year as I am making my New Year resolution to live a healthier lifestyle I start to see countless Top 10 lists of the greatest stories from the previous year or the exciting things to look for in the upcoming year.
I began 2015 less focused on new year resolutions. I am old enough to know better than to spend a ton of time and energy on something that won’t last. Instead, I am going to focus on small measures and see if I can maintain that objective over the course of a year.
The number of articles, blogs and websites with Top 10 lists, however, seems to have increased this year. There are more than ever and some of them include great news for the readers of TechNation.
According to an article on the Money magazine website, a publication of Time magazine, “The 5 Best Jobs You’ve Never Heard Of” includes three jobs that we know well.
The first in their list of jobs is “Nuclear Medicine Technologist.” Yep, we’ve all heard of this job. However, just to recap, this job requires a degree from an accredited program but it does not require medical school training. This is the person in the hospital or health care facility who operates the special medical imaging equipment to do CT scans, MRIs and other tests that are used to make a diagnosis and plan treatments. The reason this is a great job in 2015 is the pay with a reported salary of about $71,000 and because jobs are developing fast where health care and technology intersect.
You guessed it. The intersection of health care and technology is a reason the next job is No. 2 on Money’s list. “Medical Equipment Repairer” a.k.a. Biomed or HTM professional is the second best job we’ve never heard of as we enter 2015. This career usually requires a two-year degree in biomedical equipment technology or engineering and produces an average salary of about $44,000, according to Money magazine.
The No. 3 job on this list is a Digital Risk Officer. Money describes this job as somebody who prevents data breaches. This is becoming an important job at many health care facilities with more and more emphasis being placed on cybersecurity. The education requirement for this career is a two- or four-year degree in IT and digital analytics certification. The average salary for a chief risk officer is a whopping $153,602, according to the article.
Another list that caught my attention as we welcomed the new year is ECRI Institute’s Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2015. There are some familiar items on this list starting with the No. 1 hazard for 2015 – alarm hazards. Data integrity is second on the list followed by mix-up of IV lines and the inadequate reprocessing of endoscopes and surgical instruments. Ventilator disconnections not caught because of mis-set or missed alarms rounds out the Top 5. The complete list can be viewed by downloading a free white paper at https://www.ecri.org/Pages/2015-Hazards.aspx.
ECRI Institute also produced the Top 10 Hospital C-Suite Watch List for 2015.
“ECRI Institute’s 2015 Top 10 Hospital C-Suite Watch List discusses a blend of novel, new, and emerging technologies that will demand attention and planning over the next 12 to 18 months, plus important issues and programs affecting care processes and delivery in 2015 and beyond,” according to the white paper that contains the list. “We used our Institute’s intellectual capital across our 450 interdisciplinary staff to identify these new and emerging technologies and care delivery issues. Our mission is to help decision makers understand the hype versus the evidence and the important issues to consider when deciding whether to be early adopters, middle adopters, or no-adopters.”
Disinfection robots leads this list followed by 3-D printing with middleware completing the top three. Postdischarge clinics and Google Glass round out the top five items on this ECRI list. The complete list is available online at https://www.ecri.org/Pages/ECRI-Institute-2015-Top-10-Hospital-C-Suite-Watch-List.aspx.
So, as you can see, 2015 is going to be an exciting year. I can’t wait to see all the latest technology and solutions at MD Expo Nashville in late March. I hope to see you there as well. Be sure to register at MDExpoShow.com