A duo of clinical engineers, a multidisciplinary team focused on patient safety, three directors at the MedStar Health National Center for Human Factors, and an innovative biomedical services team have been recognized for their outstanding contributions to AAMI’s peer-reviewed journal, BI&T (Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology), and its twice-yearly supplement, Horizons.

“This year’s winning submissions, as selected by the BI&T Editorial Board, are a microcosm of some of the big issues that are shaping healthcare technology, namely the importance of medical device cybersecurity and electronic health record (EHR) design, as well as the role of technology in improving patient safety and outcomes,” said Managing Editor Joe Sheffer.

The winners will be formally recognized during a ceremony at the AAMI 2018 Conference & Expo in Long Beach, CA, on June 2. The conference will run June 1–4.
Best Article
This honor was awarded to Mike Busdicker, system director of clinical engineering support services at Intermountain Healthcare in Midvale, UT, and Priyanka Upendra, compliance manager for clinical engineering support services at Intermountain, for their article “The Role of Healthcare Technology Management in Facilitating Medical Device Cybersecurity,” which was published in the fall 2017 issue of Horizons. By outlining best practices, as well as processes from their own organization, Busdicker and Upendra described the instrumental role HTM professionals play in managing the security of medical devices and in ensuring that patient data—and patient lives—are protected.

Best Research Paper
For this award, Editorial Board members selected a paper published in the May/June 2017 issue of BI&T: “Continuous Surveillance of Sleep Apnea Patients in a Medical-Surgical Unit.” The authors—a team from Virtua Health and Bernouli Enterprise, Inc.—conducted two studies to identify the utility and practical implementation of continuous capnography monitoring for patients who were recovering from surgery, focusing specifically on techniques to differentiate actionable from nonactionable alarms. This paper is an important contribution to the literature on safe and effective methods for detecting opioid-induced respiratory depression.

The writing team consisted of Dana Supe, program director for clinical patient safety at Virtua Health and medical director of operations at Virtua Memorial Hospital of Burlington County; Leah Baron, chief of the department of anesthesiology at Virtua Memorial Hospital; Tom Decker, a systems integration architect for Virtua Health; Kyle Parker, a systems integrator for Virtua Health; Jeanne Venella, chief nursing officer for Bernouli; Sarah Williams, a senior product manager for Bernouli; Kari Beaton, director of enterprise solutions for Bernouli; and John Zaleski, chief analytics officer for Bernouli.

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