AAMI Update: AAMI Honors Healthcare Technologys Best and Brightest

AAMI President and CEO Robert Jensen offered his congratulations to everyone who won an AAMI award or scholarship.

“Being able to recognize the best and the brightest in healthcare technology is an honor and, honestly, one of the highlights of AAMI’s year,” Jensen said. “This year’s award and scholarship recipients have demonstrated exemplary passion and dedication to helping make healthcare technology safer and more effective. It’s our pleasure to offer our thanks for all of the incredible work they have done and all that they continue to do to elevate and grow the field.”

The 2018 AAMI award winners were:

• Lauren C. Thompson, PhD, director of the Department of Defense/Department of Veterans Affairs Interagency Program Office, who received the AAMI Foundation’s Laufman-Greatbatch Award.
• The late Robert M.S. Dickinson, owner, consultant, and trainer at Fairmed, who was honored with the AAMI Foundation & Institute for Technology in Health Care’s Clinical Solution Award.
• A multidisciplinary team from Beebe Healthcare, which serves Sussex County in southern Delaware, and RENOVO Solutions, which received the AAMI Foundation & Institute for Technology in Health Care’s Clinical Solution Award.
• Frank Overdyk, MSEE, MD, professor of anesthesiology, who won AAMI & Becton Dickinson’s Patient Safety Award.
• Jennifer Jackson, director of connectivity at Masimo, who received AAMI’s HTM Leadership Award.
• J. Scot Mackeil, CBET, senior anesthesia biomedical engineer at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who was named AAMI & GE Healthcare’s BMET of the Year.
• Clarice Holden, chief biomedical engineer at the VA North Texas Healthcare System, who received AAMI’s Young Professional Award.
• David Giarracco, vice president of global market development at Medtronic, who was honored with the Spirit of AAMI Award.
• The California Medical Instrumentation Association (CMIA), which was named AAMI’s HTM Association of the Year.

The AAMI Foundation scholarship winners, each of whom was awarded $3,000, were:

• Kahkashan Afrin, who is earning a PhD in industrial and systems engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.
• Montana Rae Delk, who is studying healthcare engineering technology management at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in Indiana.
• Benjamin Hebel, who is studying biomedical engineering technology at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan.
• Alexis Henry, who is earning a master’s degree in biomedical/clinical engineering at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut.
• Bradley Klauss, who is studying biomedical equipment technology at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania.
• Christopher Moreau, who is earning a master’s degree in engineering/healthcare engineering at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.
• Baily Williams, who is studying biomedical electronics at Western Technical College in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

More information about the AAMI awards program and this year’s winners is available at www.aami.org/awards.

AAMI Publishes Cybersecurity Guide for HTM Professionals

For too many healthcare technology management (HTM) professionals, navigating today’s cybersecurity landscape is akin to embarking on a trip abroad with no map and no compass – all the while trying to master a foreign language.

Two cybersecurity experts are addressing those obstacles in a new book from AAMI that seeks to establish a common language and understanding for cybersecurity in health care, as well as provide clear and practical guidance for securing medical devices.

The book, “Medical Device Cybersecurity: A Guide for HTM Professionals,” was edited by Stephen Grimes and Axel Wirth, both of whom are noted experts in the complicated and fast-changing world of healthcare technology cybersecurity. It features chapters by an array of experts with hands-on experience in putting cybersecurity concepts into action in health care facilities.

“The concept of medical device security remains relatively new to HTM professionals,” said Grimes, who is a managing partner and principal consultant for Strategic Health Care Technology Associates LLC, and a member of the BI&T Editorial Board. “Most HTM professionals have little or no training in cybersecurity and, as a consequence, are often neither familiar with cyber risks nor equipped to take appropriate measures to reduce those risks.”

Information technology (IT) experts in hospitals are limited in how they can help, Grimes added, because they typically don’t understand the “nuanced differences in how medical devices must be handled versus typical IT systems.”

This new book speaks to the unique dynamic of health care cybersecurity and the role that HTM professionals can – and should – play. It includes chapters on cybersecurity fundamentals, understanding the regulatory and standards environment, inventory and configuration management, and risk assessment and mitigation. It also includes examples of policies, purchase agreements and vendor contracts from the Mayo Clinic, Intermountain Healthcare and Scripps Health.

“We hope that the multi-author approach we took will provide insights on how several leading institutions have addressed the topic,” said Wirth, who is a distinguished technical architect at Symantec Corp., and a member of the BI&T Editorial Board. “There is no single path, and there is no one size fits all.”

This valuable resource is available to purchase online at www.aami.org/store (product code MDC).