Staff report
The Webinar Wednesday series continues to provide excellent educational material for industry experts on a variety of healthcare technology management (HTM) topics. More than 1,000 HTM professionals have logged in for live presentations through May 15 of this year with many more viewing the webinars via the on-demand option at WebinarWednesday.live. Recent webinars have included presentations on cybersecurity issues, patient safety, and real time locating service.
IoMT Vulnerability Management
Jeremy Linden, senior director, product management at Asimily and Robert Harbick, information security engineer at Southcoast Health, recently co-presented the Webinar Wednesday session “Two Approaches to IoMT Vulnerability Management.” The webinar was eligible for 1 credit from the ACI. It was sponsored by Asimily.
The objective of the webinar was to share information about the similarities and differences in these solutions, how to effectively use each one, and how Southcoast has integrated the two solutions to achieve superior results compared to either alone.
Attendees will now be able to:
- Understand the difference between the approach of traditional vulnerability management solutions and IoMT passive network monitoring
- Know where the traditional VM approach works and falls short for connected medical devices
- Integrate traditional VM and IoMT passive monitoring together in a vulnerability management program
The presenters also took questions from attendees during the webinar. One question was, “Is segmentation a good solution for empty vulnerability management?” The answer was yes – to a degree.
“In the end, segmentation, at best, will reduce the blast radius of an attack, right? It’s going to mean that, in a successful attack, it is a lot less successful than it would be, and that’s very important,” Linden explained. “But it’s not a substitute for actually remediating the specific issues, right? And actually reducing the inherent risk and the likelihood of exploitation of these vulnerabilities. So, I would say, you know, some segmentation is good.”
The duo expanded on the answer and replied to other queries during the webinar. The entire session along with the Q&A can be viewed on demand at WebinarWednesday.live.
The webinar was a big hit with attendees providing feedback via a survey that included the question, “How does the HTM industry benefit from Webinar Wednesdays?”
“Learning passive and active vulnerabilities on IOMT,” said Arondo Bia, supervisory biomedical equipment specialist.
“It is a resource for learning and advancing the knowledge base of the community,” said Marion Quijano, BMET III.
“Discussions from all over allow people to bounce ideas and knowledge off each other,” MedDevice Cybersecurity Analyst Scott Keith said.
Patient Safety
The Webinar Wednesday session “HTM Professionals’ Role on a Patient Safe Endoscope” was presented by Healthmark Industries Special Projects Manager Jahan Azizi. The session was sponsored by Healthmark Industries and eligible for 1 credit from the ACI.
In this 60-minute webinar, Azizi provided an overview of the HTM professional’s role as it pertains to patient safety with a specific focus on safety-related endoscopes. He discussed the importance of reporting requirements to the FDA with examples of reported problems and how preventative maintenance (PM) can help with preventing potential harm to patients from the compromised endoscope.
The webinar also discussed what HTM professionals do as well as medical devices and the different types. Azizi discussed the role of HTM professionals in the hospital as related to patient safety. He addressed reporting and why is it important.
He also shared insights regarding endoscope clinical use and history, scope design (angles, internal lumens, etc.) and a look inside the endoscope.
Azizi explored technologies that require PM and expertise of the HTM professionals, the endoscope leak test, enhanced inspection technologies and sample extraction devices for chemical testing.
As part of his presentation, Azizi opened the floor to questions. One attendee asked, “What are examples of HTM and SPD success stories?”
“This is one of those questions that if you don’t have problems, you do a great job and nobody knows about it,” he said. “So, sometimes I think that if you haven’t been in the headline of your local newspaper, you’re in good shape.”
He added that it is important to work with others.
“We collaborated with FDA, with medical device manufacturers – those that were willing to do that. So, I think clearly that collaboration is the key,” he said.
He added that when he attends the AAMI conference, he makes a point to interact with the committees and check on standards and guidelines.
Attendees provided feedback regarding the webinar via a survey. One question attendees answered was, “How has Webinar Wednesday helped you in your career?”
“Keeps me up to date with what is going on in other areas and helps in making sure we are doing all the right things to ensure the safety of our patients,” Endoscopy Tech Janet Woodland said.
“Provides a broad-based general education involving many topics,” Certified Biomedical Technician Glenn Fraser said.
“This particular webinar was outstanding in tying together technical details with the clinical engineering role in patient safety. I am really impressed with the quality of the Webinar Wednesday for continuing education,” Biomedical Engineer Emily Salmon said.
Cyber-Connected World
The presentation “The Biomedical Challenge – When Efficiency Is Not Enough” by Hunter Cobbs was sponsored by CyberMDX, a Forescout Company, and eligible for 1 credit from the ACI.
In this 60-minute webinar, Cobbs explored the cross sections of the valued biomedical role in a cyber-connected world. Managing thousands of connected medical devices without smart, automated tools is a highly laborious and tedious task. In addition to detailed classification, location tracking, utilization, downtime scheduling, and FDA recall tracking, HTM professionals also need to consider securing those assets. In the new normal, security must be part of medical device lifecycle management. The session explored the cross sections of an HTM professional’s valued role in a cyber-connected world.
Cobbs also answered questions from attendees as part of his presentation. One HTM professional asked, “I work for a mid-size hospital and I think we do feel constrained by resources. Are there any shortcuts you can recommend? So, we can do more with less.” His answer, in short, was yes.
“Absolutely, one of the main things, once again, back to the better together story, is to get connected with your IT department,” Cobbs said. “Second, if you have something like a device and our solution, it will actually recommend how you should approach the problem.”
He answered other questions and the complete Q&A session is available via on-demand viewing at WebinarWednesday.live.
Approximately 100 individuals registered for the webinar. Attendees provided feedback via a post-webinar survey that included the question, “What is the biggest takeaway you got from today’s Webinar Wednesday?”
“As we are learning in our facility, security must be part of medical device lifecycle management. We have had several incidents of ransomware in the last two months,” Biomedical Engineering Technician Edward Dalisay said.
“The need for Biomed and IT to work together to protect health care facilities from cyberattacks,” Tech Manager and BMET II Christina Bottomley said.
RTLS
The webinar “A Powerful Duo: Why RTLS Needs Both Accuracy and Confidence to Power Automation was sponsored by Cognosos and eligible for 1 credit from the ACI.
In this 60-minute webinar, Cognosos’ Chief Product Officer Adrian Jennings examined the importance of RTLS “confidence” as it relates to workflow automation in health care. This informative session covered the wide-ranging impact that both low and high confidence levels can have on mobile asset management practices. He also provided guidance for teams on how high-confidence location data can empower better purchasing decisions and automate tedious manual processes.
The webinar drew HTM professionals seeking knowledge and CE credit. Many submitted questions during a Q&A session with the presenter. One question was, “What are the metrics that can predict how much a typical hospital can save by reducing the number of assets?” Jennings provided a thoughtful answer.
“There’s a couple of ways to go on to that. One is that there is certain industry data that can show that on a general level,” he explained. “So, there’s certainly industry data and reports that show what typical utilization rate is across hospitals. And there’s plenty of, you know, places that have used these systems that can talk about what kind of utilization improvements you can make. And those two numbers can give you an idea of what the ballpark figure is for saving based on any given hospital size.”
He said there was another way to answer that question and provided more information in the Q&A session which is available for free on-demand viewing as part of the webinar at WebinarWednesday.live.
Attendees provided feedback regarding the webinar via a survey that included the question, “How will today’s webinar help you improve in your role?”
“It helps bring down the time to locate devices due for maintenance,” Biomed Victor Pablico said.
“I am trying to gather information to setup an RTLS system at our site. This was very helpful,” Chief Biomedical Engineering Kevin Hutcherson said.
For more information, visit WebinarWednesday.live.
