1. Introduction
Healthcare technology has become a significant area of focus for many people involved in the healthcare industry. The persistence of new technology development and the rate at which these technologies are being implemented into new healthcare practices has caused a significant issue for many healthcare organizations. New technologies are being created in order to improve the way in which healthcare organizations operate, to provide a service to patients that has never been offered before, and to increase the expectations of the patient regarding the quality of care they receive. It is for these reasons that the importance of healthcare technology management is recognized. Healthcare technology management is “the science of maintaining, managing and extending the life of a medical device in order to support and advance safe, effective and efficient patient care” (Patton, 200). This is no easy task. A single article could not begin to cover all the specific issues involved in healthcare technology management and for many organizations it is a continuous struggle, especially in today’s economic climate. Interdisciplinary is another term that carries a lot of importance within the context of healthcare technology management. Multidisciplinary can be a somewhat misleading term. While it is important to have input from different disciplines, multidisciplinary suggests that each discipline will do its work more or less separately with little communication or integration among the disciplines. Interdisciplinary implies a higher level of integration and more effective teamwork. Posing a single effective healthcare technology management solution frequently requires the input of teams from different disciplines working in succession and making joint or interconnected decisions. The research and identification of a biomedical device to meet a clinical need can involve teams of the following disciplines: clinical engineering, materials engineering, medical/surgical physicians, medical/surgical nurses and many others in the clinical setting. Often, the output from one team will serve as the input to another team. This requires an extensive level of communication and understanding among the teams. High-level interdisciplinary work conducted effectively throughout all phases of a device’s lifecycle can yield some truly innovative solutions in device design and more effective ways to meet clinical needs.
1.1. Definition of Healthcare Technology
As mentioned earlier, healthcare technology is an encompassing term where it includes all the practical implications of what a group of people involved in the health sector undertake to improve the state of health of an individual or a community. Technology can be anything from practical know-how such as medical procedures to devices which are aimed at improving the safety and quality of care. A more comprehensive definition suggested by the International Network for Healthcare Management & Health Services, which is often used, sees healthcare technology as “the application of knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures, and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve the quality of lives”. This definition is widely accepted and technology can be categorized into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. An example of a hard technology is a hip implant and a soft technology is an education program to increase the rate of immunization. Other definitions of healthcare technology are more specific toward the categories of technology and are often based on the etiology of the term technology. A widely accepted definition of technology is one from the World Health Organization stated in 1981 – “the drugs, vaccines, procedures, and organizational systems used in improving health.” This definition is heavily based on the original meaning of the word ‘technology’; being applied scientific knowledge to the problem of living. Thus, technology is an enabling and facilitating tool that can help accelerate the process of amending the problem of ill-health. This is often misinterpreted as in recent years there is a trend to identify technology directly with computers and other IT systems. In fact, IT is only a part of technology and is often referred to as ‘informatics’.
1.2. Importance of Interdisciplinary Management
Interdisciplinary management of healthcare technology is a much-discussed topic as technology increasingly advances and affects patient care. In an interdisciplinary setting, healthcare technology is linked to patient care in a direct manner, and this is said to make up for the healthcare technology most widely accepted by the patient community. For example, a health information system may be more effective if it is designed to meet the needs of patients to better manage their own care. This might lower the costs of the healthcare system as a whole considering the system is designed for preventative care. Interdisciplinary teams are able to develop new innovative technologies which are more likely to go through phases of trial and error. This is because an interdisciplinary team can provide a bigger picture when identifying what is required from a certain piece of technology. This can be seen for example in the development of a new medication. A pharmaceutical company may employ a team of biomedical engineers to create a more effective pill. This team can then identify the impact of this pill, such as how it is administered, how it is absorbed into the body, and any potential side effects. This information can then be relayed back to the chemical engineers to alter the structure of the pill for an improved effect. In the end, this process would provide a medication which is more effective with fewer negative side effects.