Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, Tex, received the second annual Health Devices Achievement Award for excellence in health technology management from ECRI Institute (formerly ECRI), an independent nonprofit that researches the best approaches to improving patient care.

L-R, Stephen L. Grimes, FACCE, FHIMSS, president, ACCE; James P. Keller Jr; and Yadin David

The Health Devices Achievement Award recognizes an outstanding initiative undertaken by an ECRI Institute member health care facility that improves patient safety, reduces costs, or otherwise facilitates better strategic management of health technology.

Submitted by a multi-disciplinary taskforce that included staff from biomedical engineering, nursing, and information technology, Texas Children’s Hospital’s award-winning application exemplified how teamwork in integrating technology and asset management can lead to better patient care, minimize costs, and improve communication.

“We want to honor our member hospitals’ commitment to technology management by achieving high standards of safety, quality, and cost-effectiveness in health care,” said James P. Keller Jr, VP, health technology evaluation and safety, ECRI Institute. “This project was a great example of multiple teams coming together to collaborate on a large scale and a forward-looking initiative. The collaboration sets a great example for other institutions as they begin to tackle device interoperability and the convergence of medical devices and information technology.”

Texas Children’s Hospital’s application, “The Integrated Platform for Life Safety & Tracking Initiative,” describes a commitment to adopt interoperability and standardization at the point of care to create standards open architecture for the nurse call system network, personal communication devices, asset management, and to integrate IR/RFID for equipment and staff tracking.

In judging this submission, ECRI Institute staff and members of the Health Devices Group’s external advisory board were particularly impressed with the integration platform created by introducing standards, master data source keys for equipment and patient rooms, common infrastructure elements, and a SQL database structure that allowed for queries across disciplines.

“We are honored to be selected by such an esteemed institute,” said Yadin David, director, biomedical engineering department, Texas Children’s Hospital. “This recognition will enhance our ability to share our forward looking integrated patient-care technology strategy with other health care organizations and manufacturers, and ultimately means that we will help improve patient care standards everywhere.”

The winner was announced during the American College of Clinical Engineering annual membership dinner held in Boston on June 17.

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