The winners of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Foundation's Institute for Technology and Healthcare Clinical Application Award have been announced. The award has been given to James Welch and George Blike. Welch is the vice president of Patient Safety Initiatives at Masimo, while Blike is the medical director of Patient Safety Training at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. The two are the industry's top patient safety collaborators. An announcement in this regard has been made by Masimo Corporation.
An individual or group who has applied innovative clinical engineering practices or principles to solve patient care problems is awarded this award each year. The award was shared between two cross-industry collaborators for the first time in the history of the association. While Masimo is a medical technology innovator/developer, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is a patient care provider/hospital facility.
Masimo Patient SafetyNet at Dartmouth-Hitchcock was implemented by Welch and Blike. The clinical application and efficacy excellence demonstrated through this implementation has resulted in honors for the two. The remote monitoring and wireless clinician notification system was installed with the combined high-tech and human-touch expertise of Welch and Blike. The system is based on Masimo SET Measure-Through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry monitoring.
According to Mary Logan, who is the president of AAMI, the term effective collaboration has been exemplified by Masimo’s James Welch and Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s George Blike.
In a release, Logan said, "What is particularly powerful about this duo is that they have modeled for all of us what can be accomplished when you have an effective collaboration between clinical engineering and front-line clinicians, between industry and patient safety experts, and between technology developers and a clinician who knows how to assess in a clinical setting the impact of a technology solution to a vexing safety problem."
Patient SafetyNet is designed to improve patient safety. This is done through continuous pulse oximetry monitoring. By continuously, noninvasively, and remotely monitoring multiple physiological parameters, Patient Safety Net keeps general care floor patients safer. A pager notification is received by Dartmouth-Hitchcock clinicians through the system when a patient's condition is worsening.
Further information on Masimo is available at www.masimo.com. Further information on the AAMI Foundation is available at www.aami.org.
Carolyn John is a Contributor to HealthTechZone. To read more of her articles, please columnist page.
