This notion of improved collaboration emerged as a theme among the panelists, who urged greater inclusion of HTM professionals with diverse stakeholders in decision-making, not just equipment manufacturers.

Relationships with IT departments are especially crucial due to the growing threat of cyberattacks and the heightened demand for safe and smooth transfers of patient data across entire healthcare systems.


In the interest of ushering in this era of enhanced collaboration, the panelists called for greater investment in training and service technology, the elimination of antiquated silos, reinventing training protocols with the next generation of service providers in mind, and raising overall awareness about the HTM field.

The panelists also stressed the importance of a clear chain of command, and a single individual at the helm who could be referred to when uncertainties arose.

“Have a master plan,” stressed O’Donnell. “Build levels of expertise up to the unit director, up to super users. Make investments so those conversations between IT and clinical engineers encourage basic relationships. In the hospital facilities, we want IT and clinical engineering to ebb and flow smoothly.”

Attendees of the panel were asked by the moderator, Jacobus, if their facilities had their own cybersecurity guru. Roughly 80 percent of them raised their hands. When asked if they had a single executive that IT and HTM departments answered to, the room was split fifty-fifty.

Another area of discussion at the symposium was the importance of selecting the right partners for providing replacement parts, taking into account factors beyond cost, such as quality rates, DOA rates and backup technical support among other factors.

“We need to make sure that our parts suppliers and the parts that we’re putting into that equipment are top-quality and high-quality parts that are going to be reliable and safe for our patients,” Intermountain Healthcare’s Busdicker said. “It really comes down to our patients and our consumers.”

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