Washington State Biomedical Association » Technical Articles

AAMI’s CE-IT Community Focuses on First Call Duties

President — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 04:05:02 +0000

New Document Offers Guidance on “First Call” Responsibilities
For Healthcare Networking Issues
New guidance is now available to help clinical engineering (CE) and information technology (IT) departments sort out service calls.
The CE-IT Community has published a guidance document designed to help healthcare facilities assign “first call” duties between CE and IT departments.
The CE-IT Community—a collaboration among members of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI), the American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE), and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS)—was created in 2008 to develop resources, best practices and networking opportunities to address CE-IT convergence issues in healthcare.
Traditionally CE services medical devices while IT handles networks and personal computers (PC). But as medical devices become more computerized and integrated into networks, the lines of responsibility have blurred.
The new guidance document—entitled Best Practices For Assigning First Call Responsibilities For Healthcare Networking Issues—offers advice for creating a system of support.

CEIT_FirstCall_GuidanceDocument

Slainte’ Mhath, Sandy.

When Cheap Is Not So Cheap -The Economics Of Service

President — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:57:09 +0000

Healthcare costs in the U.S. are running well over $2.2 trillion each year. The hospital market alone will reach an estimated $700 billion over the next couple of years. High tech capital equipment makes an important impact both on costs and outcomes. Each year providers will purchase $31 billion worth of high-tech laboratory, patient monitoring, imaging, radiation therapy, and robotic technology. Healthcare IT and telemedicine technology add another $35 billion or more to the bottom line. If you combine these high technology items with lower-end healthcare technologies, a hospital can expect to spend at least 2% to 3% of its budget on new technology every year, and that excludes service costs. This is a trend that will continue as the population ages and consumers and physicians demand more leading edge technology.

The Economics of Service

MDBuyline article by James X Laskaris.

Stay up to date with WSBA

president-elect — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:01:40 +0000

There’s a great way to stay current with the latest news about the WSBA. It’s called RSS, which stands for Real Simple Syndication. You can stay up-to-date without needing to look at the web page in question or set up an account with a user name and password. Instead you subscribe just to the specific information you are interested in. The New York Times web site, for instance, allows you to subscribe to feeds alerting you to the latest stories in world news, US news, or even movie reviews, among many others. Our WSBA website has two feeds that you can subscribe to – the events feed, to check updated events, and the comments feed to read what members say about postings.

To get started you’ll need to have a feed reader or aggregator. There are a variety of RSS readers available, from stand alone applications to plug-ins for email programs like Microsoft Outlook. Web browsers such as Firefox 3.0.6 , Internet Explorer 7, and even Safari if you are a Mac user, have the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed built-in. To monitor the 54 web pages I follow, I use a web based reader called Newsgator Online. It allows me the flexibility to access my feeds from any computer with an internet connection, anywhere. It even allows me to check my feeds on my cell phone. Another good alternative is Feedburner.

Once you find a web page you would like to subscribe to, look for the RSS button. On the WSBA web page, for instance, it is on the right hand side under the heading ‘Meta’. There are links for Entries RSS and Comments RSS, followed by the RSS logo. Click on the link and follow the directions of whichever reader you are using.

Give it a try. I think you’ll like the convenience of staying up-to-date with the WSBA and other sites, without having to go to each web page, and your feeds will update whenever new content is added.