News & Events

Lifecycle management of imaging modalities proves to be a balancing act of life expectancy and expenditure of high dollars. Biomedical Engineering can be placed “between a rock and a hard place” when managing conversations with clinical users and finance about replacing these modalities. With Siemens Teamplay, though, Biomedical Engineering has the ability to look at utilization of imaging modalities that use a DICOM header to push images to PACS. This reporting application has the ability to look at dosage, modality workload and protocol used during exams. It is a vendor agnostic system that can access all imaging modalities. In this session, Siemens will present information about Teamplay and outline the added benefits of their technology.

Ambulatory Telehealth has been fairly well established in the medical space, but a growing need for inpatient telemedicine has been a recent trend. In certain locations, specifically rural communities, there are physician shortages, especially when it comes to physicians trained in critical care medicine or other subspecialties. Telemedicine expands the geographical reach of highly trained clinical specialists, getting the proper care to a larger demographic. The potential benefits of implementing an effective Tele ICU not only include providing increased access to physicians in rural areas but also elimination of unnecessary costs, and most importantly increased patient care by potentially reducing readmissions, mortality rate, and transfer rate. This session will review the technology involved when implementing a Tele ICU, the impact on bed side clinical staff, and the benefits to the patient.

When implementing and sustaining a medical equipment management program (MEMP), VISN 20 has utilized empirical statistical analysis and monogram word count frequency to determine PM intervals and annual evaluation of alternative equipment maintenance programs.

Acquiring new medical equipment requires continuous oversight of every medical device and its associated history contained within the inventory. When the equipment is ready for replacement, Property Management and Biomedical Engineering must coordinate meetings with the end users to field any concerns or acquisition suggestions that contribute to selecting additional or replacement equipment. The C-Suite requires a strong reason for spending money on equipment and potentially construction. With all of these factors, planned and unforeseen, the “balancing act” can be a daunting task that may yield dissatisfaction from the stakeholders. In this session, best practices for managing equipment planning and lifecycle analyses will be discussed.