Anthology of Complex Technology Solutions, New from AAMI Foundation

The AAMI Foundation has released the last in a series of free anthologies with solutions to seemingly intractable problems with healthcare technologies.

Complex Technology Solutions offers guidance, best practices, and practical tools for healthcare systems and hospitals and for industry—all developed by the AAMI Foundation National Coalition to Promote Safe Use of Complex Healthcare Technology.

“New and complex healthcare technologies require close collaboration of administrative, clinical, human factors, risk, and industry personnel for safe integration into the healthcare environment,” said Tandi M. Bagian, chief engineer at the National Center for Patient Safety at the U.S. Department of Patient Safety and a National Coalition team leader. “This coalition report, developed with a broad range of experts, provides guidance to facilitate such collaborative efforts.”

The anthology features focus sections with actionable resources to help the healthcare and industry communities more effectively manage complex technologies and collaborate to keep patients safe:

Focus on Healthcare Systems and Hospitals

• Developing a business case for effective acquisition
• Guidance and templates for proper integration of new medical technology
• Using risk profiles to plan training and introduce complex technology
• Competence assessment for use of complex technology

Focus on Industry

• Human factors activities and associated standards
• A capability maturity model to integrate human factors activities: guidance for product developers
• Learning from device use issues

“Establishing the practices recommended here will help make medical equipment easier to learn and easier to use,” said Peter Doyle, senior human factors engineer and National Coalition team leader. “More importantly, it will help to reduce the occurrence of failure modes that accompany the use of complex healthcare technology.”

The National Coalition to Promote Safe Use of Complex Healthcare Technology, which launched in 2017, responded to overarching challenges that emerged in three other AAMI Foundation National Coalitions on infusion therapy safety, alarm management safety, and opioid safety through continuous electronic monitoring.

“All four anthologies of the National Coalitions are freely and publicly available to ensure open access to this important information,” said Steve Campbell, AAMI Foundation executive director and acting president and CEO of AAMI. “We encourage you to share and use this valuable content with your colleagues in your organization.” All four anthologies include links to patient safety seminar presentations, peer-reviewed journal articles, case studies, and podcast episodes.