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ECRI Solidifies its Purpose and Launches a New NameECRI, the nonprofit organization that represents a source of unbiased, independent research and information for the health care industry, has begun a new era with the unveiling of a new name—ECRI Institute—along with a new logo and brand image. The nearly 40-year-old organization has dedicated itself to bringing the discipline of applied scientific research to discover which medical procedures, devices, drugs, and processes are best. Whether testing the safety and effectiveness of medical devices or collecting and analyzing patient safety data to find broad-scale systematic approaches, ECRI Institute has worked to uncover the best approaches to improving patient care, and plans to further this with its new name and initiatives.  “Early last year we began a self-examination process whose goal was to allow us to better define who we are and how we could better help our members improve patient care,” said James P. Keller Jr, VP, health technology evaluation and safety, ECRI Institute. “Our new name, ECRI Institute, and our new tagline, ‘The Discipline of Science. The Integrity of Independence,’ are a distillation of the values and goals that have sustained our mission for so many years.” Along with its new name, the organization has new initiatives on the table that will cover, among other topics, hazard management and ECRI Institute’s Alerts Tracker, which contributes to patient safety by helping hospitals handle the hundreds of hazard and safety notices and recalls issued by medical device manufacturers each year. How will this and the other new initiatives enhance the work of clinical and biomedical engineers? “Our new brand reinforces that science is the foundation of everything we do,” Keller said. “We deal in facts. We don’t guess, we don’t speculate, we don’t invent. We find out. We test medical devices according to meticulously developed protocols. We get the hard information that lets us cut through the hype of marketing campaigns. The values emphasized in our new organizational name are the essential traits of Health Devices, a most trusted resource for clinical engineers and biomedical equipment technicians for 35 years. We’re unveiling changes to help this core audience find the information they need quicker. One recent change was reformatting the Evaluation Update section to provide up-to-date purchasing guidance on devices we’ve previously evaluated, as well as offering ECRI Institute’s perspectives on models we haven’t yet tested, in a compact easily accessible presentation.” Keller added, “We know that our members are busy, so we’ve reorganized our guidance articles and evaluations with a key facts section up front, backed up by the clinical and technical details so many readers value. We’re also launching a new membership Web site with easier access to a wealth of practical advice, including more than 1,000 archived articles, device hazard and recall reports, and educational health technology slide shows.” Unbiased information for the health care community has been ECRI Institute’s cornerstone, and the impact of unbiased information will be discussed during ECRI Institute’s annual health policy conference on comparative effectiveness in Washington, DC, October 17 and 18. “Our fierce independence is what allows our members to trust that our judgments are our judgments,” Keller said. “We accept no outside advertising in our publications and we have the most strictly enforced conflict-of-interest rules in the field of health care research. Our members have always known that they can trust our objectivity and impartiality. These will never change.” 
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