The clinical engineer: A full member of the health care team?

Survey of Clinical Engineering in Developing Countries and Model for Technology Acquisition and Diffusion

“…In Asia, clinical engineers performed more repairs than technicians; perhaps their qualifications were more like those of technologists in industrialized countries. This was not observed in Latin America or in developed countries [2][3][4][5][6].…”

“…In developing countries, the existence of clinical engineering occurred later, in the 1990s, with a few exceptions in countries like India and Brazil which appeared in the 1980s. The rapid increase of medical equipment acquisition in hospitals was the main thrust behind the development of the Clinical Engineering field, as it was simple to demonstrate how in-house equipment management delivered more service for less cost [2].…”

Evaluation of Clinical Engineering Department Services in Riyadh City Hospitals

“…The findings of both administration and training skills are not affected by hospital size and professional role and this might be attributed, in terms of administration skills, to the great interest of MOH with managerial and administrative skills in all health facilities, while for training skills might be due to the training skills deems one of the essential characteristics for clinical engineering department staff [33][34][35]. Regarding the technical or performance skills of (CEDS), in terms of maintenance management system, there was significant difference with the hospital size and experience and this might be due to two reasons; the first is the ratio of CED engineers to technicians staff in the hospital, Fize [36] and Eisler [37] who reported that the complexity of medical equipment will decrease the need of technicians. The second is the lack of fixed guidelines for maintenance management system by Ministry of Health, which makes the established maintenance management system depends on CED staff experience [38][39].…”

Teaching Quality Improvement: A Collaboration Project Between Medicine and Engineering

“…In addition, they have provided equipment-related technical services including repair and maintenance. 14,15 Engineers in the field of human factors have assisted with the identification of the nature and causes of human errors in anesthesiology 16,17 and in intensive care units. 18 More recently, systems biology, an emerging branch of science, has applied traditional engineering analytical tools (eg, computational analysis, systems modeling) to describe biological systems.…”