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Received February 2, 2018, accepted March 14, 2018, date of publication March 25, 2018.

Clinical Engineering/Health Technology

Management 2015 Global Update

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By T Judd, A Hernandez, W Gentles, and S Calil 4
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IFMBE CED Secretary, ACCE, USA.
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WHO-PAHO / Former Senior Advisor Health Technology (HT), ACCE IC Chair, USA.
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BT Medical Technology Consulting / Past President, CMBES, ACCE, Canada.
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CEB-FEEC – UNICAMP / Professor, IFMBE CED Past Chairman, Brazil.

ABSTRACT

Medical device systems Clinical Engineering (CE)/Health Technology Management (HTM) strategies and best prac-
tices are now well established in most first world and many developing countries (DC).
Progress is being made to address identified gaps in DC CE/HTM, such as appropriate equipment selection and life-
cycle management. One contributor to this progress is the 25 years of CE/HTM Seminars provided by WHO-PAHO,
ACCE, and more recently, IFMBE CED, to 80 countries. There is also a new emerging challenge; the requirement for
medical device (clinical data) integration (MDI) into electronic health records (EHRs) to improve care quality and
safety (aka CE-IT).
This study will review CE/HTM progress, gaps, and new challenges since the last study in 2011. It will provide a
framework to direct the global CE/HTM movement forward in collaborative fashion, alongside other initiatives in 2015,
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such as the 1 International CE-HTM Congress and the Global CE Summit held in Hanzhou, China, in October, 2015.
Keywords: Clinical Engineering, Health Technology Management, CE, HTM, CE/HTM seminars, medical device lifecycle
management, CE education, CE-Information Technology (CE-IT), medical device integration, IFMBE CE Division.

INTRODUCTION published the discussion in World Health Forum. The
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“In the 1980s, it became clear to the World Health roundtable not only confirmed the 2 challenges identi-
Organization (WHO), academia, and various global non- fied earlier – acquisition planning and maintenance, but
government organizations (NGOs) that there were many also pointed out fundamental underlying issues. First
failed medical device technology transfer projects in the and foremost is the fact that unlike drugs and vaccines,
previous 2 decades, resulting in a large amount of inoper- medical equipment requires continual outlay of funds, on
able sophisticated equipment and unmet healthcare needs order of 6–15% of original acquisition price, for the life
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in spite of significant financial investment.” 1 of equipment, often up to 10–20 years after acquisition.
Thus, it is useless for NGOs and financing organizations
“In 1988, WHO organized a virtual international
to provide equipment donations or investment loans if
roundtable with input from experts around the world and
the recipient countries cannot pay for recurrent expenses,

J Global Clinical Engineering Special Issue 1: 4-14; 2018 4