Clinical engineering systems management

In many hospitals, administrators have established clinical engineering departments to manage effectively all the technological resources, especially those relating to medical equipment, that are necessary for providing patient care. The primary objective of these departments is to provide a broad-based engineering program that addresses all aspects of medical instrumentation and systems support. 

Evaluation of indicators requires the collection, storage, and analysis of data from which the indicators can be derived. A standard set of data elements must be defined. Fortunately, one only has to look at commercially available equipment management systems to determine the most common data elements used. Indeed, most of the high-end software systems have more data elements than many clinical engineering departments are willing to collect. These standard data elements must be carefully defined and understood. This is especially important if the data will later be used for comparisons with other organizations. Different departments often have different definitions for the same data element. It is crucial... 

Instrumentation and Technology BI T), and the Journal of Clinical Engineering. The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) produces the Journal of Healthcare Information Management and Healthcare IT News (published by MedTech). HIMSS, AAMI, ACCE, and CMBES all provide education courses during their conferences, as well as periodic webinars, teleconferences, special publications, etc. 

Evaluate. Clinical engineers evaluate equipment before it is purchased to ensure it meets standards of current patient care and safety. They may make recommendations on the equipment a health care system should purchase to provide patients with cutting-edge care. They may manage or coordinate service contracts or purchase negotiations and... 

Most clinical data management systems used for clinical trials today store their data in relational database software such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server. A relational database is composed of a set of rectangular data matrices called tables that relate or associate with one another by certain key fields. The language most often used to work with relational databases is structured query language (SQL). The SAS/ACCESS SQL Pass-Through Facility and the SAS/ACCESS LIBNAME engine are the two methods that SAS provides for extracting data from relational databases. 

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