It's tough because the educational pipeline has gotten much smaller for biomeds than it was 10 or 15 years ago, so it's difficult to recruit and positions are open six months to a year sometimes before you find someone.

HCB News: What do you attribute that to?
AR: We've always been faced with an identity crisis where people don't know who we are and what we do. I'm on the path to retirement right now and working remotely, but when I was in Philadelphia, I was an adjunct teacher at a local community college trying to get more students interested in a biomedical engineering career.
We just don't have a great pathway because nobody really knows what we do, even though we're listed as one of the up and coming career opportunities for people. We have that Rodney Dangerfield effect. We don't have any respect.

Hopefully, it's starting to turn around with schools like the Community College of Philadelphia helping us get the word out and attract some good, quality people.

HCB News: Are you satisfied with the data you are generating for asset management?
AR: We’ve used a CMMS from MediMizer for a long time. We use it to manage medical device inventory, asset management and preventative maintenance and repair management. With all the changes recently with [the] Joint Commission, we have to follow manufacturer procedures so we incorporated the procedures within the CMMS, and most biomed departments will tell you that's what they do.

HCB News: What role are you being asked to play in hospital cybersecurity?
AR: It varies a lot depending on the organization. At CHOP we have some involvement, but we're struggling a little bit because, in many respects, the device manufacturers want to handle it on their own while we have an IT department that wants to manage it. This gets complex because with medical devices we don't live in a world where you're running off a common operating system like Windows or Linux or whatever it may be. Instead, you're dealing with proprietary devices that don't make it easy to patch or monitor the way you can in the regular world of IT.

Since our IT department has over 500 people and does so many things in the hospital, it isn’t something the biomeds are highly involved with. But there are other hospitals where biomeds are more involved and it's certainly one of those top five items that biomed departments are struggling with.

HCB News: Have you experienced challenges when it comes to obtaining the necessary service training, codes and manuals from equipment manufacturers?
AR: It depends. We work on building relationships with vendors up front when we purchase equipment. As it relates to imaging equipment, a community hospital might struggle to work with Siemens, Philips and GE, but we are able to work successfully with them.

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