PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA-ECRI Institute, an independent nonprofit organization that researches the best approaches to improving patient care, announced that it has been awarded a new contract by the U.S. Air Force to deploy ECRI Institute's Alerts Tracker™, a Web-based, automated hazard and recall alert management system, at 80 Air Force facilities worldwide.

Alerts Tracker, utilizing results from ECRI Institute investigations; medical device, drug, and recall information culled from ECRI Institute's extensive databases; and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, manufacturers, and other sources, electronically distributes alerts directly to appropriate staff in each facility. Use of Alerts Tracker ensures hazard and recall alerts don't slip through the cracks by enabling organizations to easily monitor staff actions, speed up facility response time, and quickly administer required reports.

"Alerts Tracker allows us to build upon the services we have come to know and trust from ECRI Institute," says David Baker, Chief, Air Force Clinical Engineering. "This tool, combined with the expert, unbiased information that has been a cornerstone of our equipment management program for over 20 years, allows our clinical engineering departments to provide first class support to healthcare for service men and women around the globe. The corporate level visibility that we now have within our office at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and regional visibility at our medical equipment repair centers ensures that facilities are reacting quickly and consistently to ensure patient safety regardless of their location."
"We are excited to expand our relationship with the U.S. Air Force to include Alerts Tracker," says James P. Keller, Vice President, Health Technology Evaluation and Safety, ECRI Institute. "Managing medical product safety is a very complex task that requires making sure that the right information about product risks and failures gets to the right people very quickly. The Air Force is taking a leadership role in this regard by automating and streamlining the hazard and recall alert process with Alerts Tracker."

In addition to subscribing to Alerts Tracker, the Air Force will renew its memberships in ECRI Institute's Health Devices Gold (HDgold), a premier service delivering a broad suite of information resources used to guide the selection, use, maintenance, and management of healthcare technologies; Health Devices Online System, a service providing evaluations, guidance articles, hazard and user experience reports, talk-to-the-specialist articles and slide shows, as well as other useful tools for managing healthcare technology; and Health Devices International Sourcebase, the first-of-its kind online database of medical products and their manufacturers, suppliers, and servicers.

ECRI Institute (formerly ECRI), a nonprofit organization, dedicates itself to bringing the discipline of applied scientific research to healthcare to uncover the best approaches to improving patient care. As pioneers in this science for nearly 40 years, ECRI Institute marries experience and independence with the objectivity of evidence-based research. ECRI Institute is designated a Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization and an Evidence-based Practice Center by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

For more information, please visit www.ecri.org.

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