Dear INFRATECH colleagues,
I agree that a co-ordinated approach to the purchase and use of medical devices is required in which all stakeholders are involved. In the UK each hospital or cluster of hospitals would have a medical equipment management committee. HTM and HTA are of course important. Medical device regulations and policy (nationally and locally) are [...]
Dear Malcolm and Calil,
Once upon a time… Yes, it is a story I am about to tell.
Some years ago, in an assignment in Sierra Leone, West Africa, we came out with the following as provisions for CE staff job descriptions and “executive-level” positions:
1. Job designations
Job designations were recommended with these main features:
i- The types [...]
Mladen, Andrei and other colleagues,
I fully concur with the usefulness of a common framework to help us
understand big-picture issues. I would like to share my own experience in
using common frameworks to bring out similarities as well as to contrast
dissimilarities between different systems.
For example: I developed a common framework in the WHO Document “Medical
Device [...]
Dear all,
The discussion about the importance of access to medical
technologies/services illustrates the necessary connections between Health
Technology Management (HTM) and Health Technology Assessment (HTA).
The bigger picture mentionned in the emails is the focus of HTA.
Reiner Banken
Dear Mladen,
Thank you very much for your answer. Perhaps should I have formulated my
question more precisely. I am sure you are aware of the “call for
innovative technologies that address global health concerns” from the
WHO. In these regards I was wondering what would happen in the following
scenario: let’s assume some company or team [...]
Dear Clinical Engineering Colleagues,
The American College of Clinical Engineering has just released its 2010 Body
of Knowledge Survey and we would like to invite you to participate.
The Body of Knowledge survey is critical in assisting the ACCE with defining
the scope of practice and knowledge base for Clinical Engineers, Healthcare
Technology Managers and Clinical Systems Engineers [...]
Dear Klaus
I am not aware of patents being a barrier to access to medical devices,
but do know that the cost of patents (as well as the lack of accredited
testing bodies, limited access to funding and venture capital, etc.) is
a barrier for innovation in resource-poor countries (and even in some
moderately-resourced countries).
Kind regards
Mladen Poluta
Hello all,
We are looking to hire a full-time employee based in Durham, NC to train
biomedical equipment technicians (BMET) in Rwanda and Cambodia. A complete
job description is attached. Please feel free to forward this to anyone who
may be interested in the position, and thank you for your consideration.
Justin
Justin Cooper, MSE
BMET Country Coordinator
Engineering World Health
The Prizery, Suite [...]
The idea of a broad and all-encompassing view of access is vital to
overcome all the barriers to accessing good (enough) healthcare.
The idea of good enough is also important as perfect is too far away and
in most cases always going to be far too expensive. This discussion
should also include transport, an often neglected part [...]
Dear All,
I have a question for which I would love to have the opinion of this
community: in how far are patents representing a barrier to access to
medical devices in resource-poor countries? When I was in charge of IP,
in my former life as an exec in a medical devices company, we strictly
never filed [...]
Mladen,
I couldn’t agree more with what you are saying. The idea of a broad and all-encompassing view of access, and within a common framework, was exactly the one behind my brief comment. And you very well, as always, elaborated on this bringing in a bigger picture. Access to (benefits of) medical devices, [...]
Dear Michael and Andrei
No one is suggesting that Access to medical devices is all that
matters, but it is a crucial step in achieving the benefits of medical
devices via healthcare interventions, and constitutes one element (the
other two being utilisation and effectiveness) of Effective Coverage,
defined as ˜the ratio of actual health gain from healthcare
interventions to maximum potential [...]
Dear All,
Fully agree with Michael. Perhaps we should look at access differently and
define it differently in the case of medical devices. We should look at it
not as just a physical access to a piece of hardware, but as access to
medical device benefits. With this view of access, we will embrace all
components on [...]
Dear All,
Let us be cautious to equate the benefits of access to medicine with that of
access to medical devices. With medicine, the pill does the job; with
medical device, they rely on the user to effect outcome and to maintain
durable devices. Barriers to true benefits from medical devices lie beyond
access. Let us not [...]
Dear All,
There is probably more money spent on consumables (subset of medical devices) and reagents (IVD devices) than on medical equipment.
Medical devices represent a budget probably smaller than but comparable ( same order of magnitude) to the medicines budget in health care.
Medical devices are said to be growing faster than pharma but in my [...]
