Methodist Hospital of Southern California, Arcadia, CA, has won the 8th Annual Health Devices Achievement Award.
Awarded by ECRI Institute, an independent non-profit organization that researches the best approaches to improving patient care, the award recognizes an outstanding initiative undertaken by an ECRI Institute member healthcare institution that improves patient safety, reduces costs, or otherwise facilitates better strategic management of health technology.
Methodist Hospital’s winning submission, Redefining Medical Equipment Management and Giving a Solution to Vulnerabilities from New Medical Device Technology, describes its development of a new integrated systems management program that identifies equipment vulnerabilities related to patient safety, information availability, and cybersecurity that result from the introduction of advanced and increasingly complex medical devices in the healthcare setting.
“We are honored that ECRI Institute has recognized the innovative systems-based approach our team took to address medical device cybersecurity vulnerabilities,” said Anthony Coronado, biomedical engineering manager, Methodist Hospital. “Our integrated systems management program was developed by a team who was committed to ensuring patient safety and delivering better healthcare.”
The hospital’s biomedical engineering team revised its procedures for incoming inspections and ongoing device oversight to include verifying the cybersecurity of networked devices and the protected health information they contain.
“The cybersecurity risk with medical devices is a serious and emerging concern which most hospitals have yet to significantly address,” said ECRI Institute’s James Keller, Jr., vice president, health technology evaluation and safety. “We congratulate Methodist Hospital for this important initiative—it sets a great example for other hospitals on how to tackle this issue.”
Methodist Hospital of Southern California, 8th Annual Health Devices Achievement Award, ECRI Institute, Anthony Coronado
