Occasionally, one of our professional profiles will read more like our Biomed Adventures feature. For one HTM professional, taking an incredibly circuitous route, to go from her initial biomed training to her current assignment as a director, is one of those instances. That route looks like this: Cape Town, South Africa to Connecticut to Michigan to New York City to California. Her experience definitely qualifies as an adventure.
Izabella Gieras, MS, MBA, CCE, Director of Clinical Technology at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, California, is well travelled. Besides her HTM-related travel, she previously lived in eastern Europe and in the Middle East as a child. She has learned a lot along the way.
“At the end of my BS degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, I was introduced to a few introductory courses in clinical and biomedical engineering,” Gieras remembers. “I found them fascinating, knowing that I can combine engineering and medicine. I never looked back and today thoroughly enjoy what I am doing.”
Gieras’ family moved to the United States in 1998.
After earning that Bachelor’s Degree, Gieras went on to work on a Master of Biomedical Engineering with a two-year clinical engineering internship at a hospital in Connecticut.
“This provided me with a great hands on exposure to the everyday life of a clinical engineer,” she says.
The education and adventure did not end in Connecticut. It continued to evolve.
“I started as a clinical engineer at Beaumont Hospital Systems in Michigan, moved into management after I completed my MBA. My professional journey has been very rewarding as I had an opportunity to experience a wide range of professional activities from technology management, human factors engineering, simulations, risk management, to now IT-based undertakings,” Gieras says.
Before landing her current director position she says her focus had been on overall technology management, including risk management and human factors engineering. She headed a human factors initiative while at Beaumont. She was also on a number of committees while there, including some co-chair responsibilities.
Experience and Training
Gieras is very involved in the HTM community, often limited by the 24 hours in a day.
“The Healthcare Technology Management field provides us with so many wonderful opportunities, however one of the challenges I face is findings the time to participate in all of them,” she says.
“Huntington Hospital is currently looking at the Real Time Locating System (RTLS) for asset management. We have had this on the horizon for quite some time now,” Gieras says. “Because a lot of enabling technologies became more mature and reliable, and less expensive even with addition of new capabilities, we decided it will be a perfect time to start the technology assessment process towards the end of last year.”
In addition to the RTLS project, she has also been working on alarm management. She says that her department is entering into a multiyear master plan for their facility, which includes medical equipment planning.
Gieras sees all of these developments as a real positive. All projects bring challenges, but at the same time, give her an opportunity to work with a diverse group of health care professionals and observe the ever-evolving changes to our health care environment,” she says.
Through her involvement in furthering the HTM field, she has caught the attention of some major organizations. She is a past presenter at the 2015 MD Expo in Las Vegas. She presented “An Efficient and Cost-effective Approach to Medical Equipment Assessments and Acquisitions.” She also co-presented “The World of Connectivity – Building a Strategy to Support Medical Device Integration and Alarm Management.”
She also has a long list of publications she has contributed to, including TechNation. She is also a member of the magazine’s editorial board.
Recognition and the Future
“Last year, I was fortunate enough to be awarded the AAMI Healthcare Technology Leadership Award, which was a great honor,” Gieras says.
AAMI said the award recognizes individual excellence, achievement, and leadership in the healthcare technology management (HTM) field.
“Gieras has served as an advocate for her peers by writing for and contributing to professional publications, participating on committees, and speaking at industry events,” according to AAMI.
She has also been very involved with AAMI on many fronts.
More recently, she was honored with the 2016 American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE) Professional Achievement in Management/Managerial Excellence Award. She is a past president of the organization, serves as a board member of the Healthcare Technology Foundation (HTF) and chairs the HTF Clinical Alarms Workgroup.
Despite all the time devoted to her profession, Gieras does find time for life’s simple pleasures.
“I enjoy spending time with my husband, Kris, and our 4-year-old son, James. During our spare time, we love taking long walks to the local farmers market and going to the beach over the weekend. I love travelling and exploring new places,” she says.
Moving forward, her active interest in human factors engineering will no doubt bring a unique perspective to device design and the patient environment, benefitting patients, clinicians and HTM.
“I am very passionate about patient safety. As HTM professionals, we have so many different ways of impacting patient safety,” Gieras says. “Working on a wide range of human factors engineering initiatives has really opened up my eyes to many ways we can use existing and new technologies to improve safety of our patients and those around them and making technology easier to use and maintain by health care professionals.”
That’s the human factor; always trying to improve things.
