by
Gus Iversen, Editor in Chief | August 03, 2018
From the August 2018 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
HCB News: Are you able to get necessary training, codes and manuals from the equipment manufacturers?
PF: Most equipment manufacturers provide equipment-specific manuals at the time of purchase and training is usually available at a price. Challenges can arise through the equipment planning process. Budgets reflecting training and travel need to be created during the equipment replacement planning stages. Budgeting after the fact makes it less likely that sufficient training and travel dollars would be allocated to ensure optimum training.
New regulations focus on ensuring staff competency, which, for many devices, implies that staff is manufacturer-trained on specific system hardware and applications. MSK has implemented “train the trainer” programs to ensure new staff are internally trained to provide some level of core capability and competency.
HCB News: How involved are you in capital equipment purchasing?
PF: This is an increasing area of concern. It is an expectation of regulatory agencies, and vital that Biomedical Engineering organizations are part of the capital equipment purchasing process for medical devices and clinical applications. MSK is currently creating processes, ensuring Biomedical Engineering will be a participant and contributor in the review and recommendation process. This will focus and drive standardization, service coordination, and advanced knowledge and review of space requirements, staffing, and education and training.
HCB News: What role are you being asked to play in hospital cybersecurity?
PF: Cybersecurity is one of the expanding roles of Biomedical Engineering, as mentioned earlier. Medical devices are increasingly networked and integrated into the hospital network architecture. This enables potential security breaches to start at the medical device and penetrate the hospital-networked applications. Many medical devices are designed to be open systems, specifically designed to provide rapid or continuous access and visibility. Biomedical Engineering is partner to IT cybersecurity for medical devices. Early applications focus on developing detailed device connectivity diagrams to identify the access points on the medical devices or device network. Access can go both ways, from the device to the network and from the network back to the device. Research has already documented the ability to alter functionality of medical devices through breeches in security, which have the potential of putting patients at risk. Biomedical Engineering is also working with IT to develop methods to identify security issues and implement a medical device recovery plan.
