Prof Akinwale Coker (University of Ibadan, Nigeria) will discuss about the importance of problem identification and needs assessment phase in healthcare technologies and medical devices design with special focus on low-resource settings, and the approaches through which such can be achieved. He will focus on the process of medical device development should always be aimed at filling certain gaps that were previously detected during a needs assessment. The second part of the talk will be a showcase of several medical devices (e.g., an infant warmer, a needle crusher, an incubator, etc.) that were prototyped in his university in collaboration with some other local and international universities.

Martina Andellini was interviewed about this project carried out in Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome.

This project aims at developing a rigorous and reliable decision-making support algorithm for active implantable medical devices (AIMDs) in order to evaluate their performances and to finally select the most suitable and patient-specific AIMDs model.

The video of the interview can be found Link to the video.

Organized by the Institute of Biomedical Technology (INBIT), and endorsed by Hellenic Society of Biomedical Technology (ELEVIT), Clinical Engineering Division (CED) and Health Technology Assessment Division (HTAD) of IFMBE.

When: May 11, 2020, Zoom

11:30 AM Greece Topic: HTA of Medical Devices webinar Agenda:

11:30 – 12:00 Introduction on HTA of Medical Devices, Prof. Nicolas Pallikarakis

12:00 – 12:45 Different Approaches for HTA Appraisal of Medical Devices, Ass. Prof. Leandro Pecchia

12:45 – 13:00 Q & A

Recording available here.

The main results from the field studies in Sub-Saharan Africa were presented, with a focus on international standards, medical locations and donations of medical devices. No video available, but more information can be found in these articles:

[1] D. Piaggio, D. Medenou, R.C. Houessouvo, L. Pecchia, Donation of Medical Devices in Low-Income Countries: Preliminary Results from Field Studies, in: International Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering, Springer, 2019, pp. 423-427.

[2] L. Di Pietro, D. Piaggio, I. Oronti, A. Maccaro, R.C. Houessouvo, D. Medenou, C. De Maria, L. Pecchia, A. Ahluwalia, A Framework for Assessing Healthcare Facilities in Low-Resource Settings: Field Studies in Benin and Uganda, Journal of Medical and Biological Engineering, (2020) 1-9.

Professor Ratko Magjarević, University of Zagreb

Monday 23rd April, 4 pm, D202 School of Engineering

Speaker: Ratko Magjarević received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1994 from the University of Zagreb. After his appointment in industry at the Institute of Electrical Engineering “Koncar,“ he joined the Electronic Measurement and Biomedical Engineering Group at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. He is full professor teaching several courses in Electronic Instrumentation and Biomedical Engineering. As visiting professor he was teaching at Universities in Dubrovnik, Rijeka, Stuttgart, Trieste, Ljubljana, Madrid and Bogota. His scientific and professional interest is in fields of electronic and biomedical instrumentation, in particular in bioelectric potential analysis and in cardiac pacing, computer modelling of biological systems, in research of new methods for drug delivery based on electropermeabilisation and recently in research in biomedical and health informatics, in particular in research of personalised intelligent health systems and body area networks. Previously serving as the President of International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE) 2012-15, he currently holds the office of Vice-President of the International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine and is the Editor in Chief of the IFMBE Proceedings series published by Springer.

Aim: Moving the paradigm of health from just curing the disease to its prevention and prediction, and by introducing the empowerment of patients into health policies, health care and intensive use of numerous health devices for well –being, diagnostics, monitoring and treatment has entered life and homes of millions all over the world. All these new devices and technologies generated challenges to health care providers in managing the health care system and in managing the data generated by the system and all its parts. In addition to “classical” issues of health technology management, such as technology planning, selection, procurement, inspection, admittance, maintenance, and disposal, new technologies opened a series of considerations on accuracy, security and safety of medical data acquired by new technologies. With the endeavor to build future health systems on Internet of Things (IoT), or more precisely on Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), there is a lot to be agreed and put in order on technological side, as it is also from the legal and ethical point of view.

February 6^th 2018, 13:00, Room A401, School of Engineering

Speaker: Nicolas Pallikarakis is Emeritus Professor of the University of Patras, Greece; Founder of the Institute of Biomedical Technology (INBIT), Patras, Greece, in 1991; Past Chairman of the HTA Division of the IFMBE; Founding member of EAMBES Fellows; and Elected member of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE). He is one of the creators of the international M.Sc. program in Biomedical Engineering (BME) established in 1989 at the University of Patras, Greece. Prof Pallikarakis has more than 130 publications in international scientific journals and conference proceedings. Coordinator of more than 30 European and Greek R&D projects. In the domain of BME education, he coordinated a number of Erasmus/Tempus projects. The two more recent Curricula Reformation and Harmonisation in the field of Biomedical Engineering (CRH BME) and the European Neighbouring Area (ENA) countries that created four new BME Joint programs in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia, based on the core curriculum proposed by the previously mentioned CRH BME project. Last January he has been invited to represent Greece in the Erasmus+ 30 year’s celebration launching event in Brussels and in June 2017, he received one of the 33 Awards given to Erasmus+ participants in a special ceremony at the EU Parliament in Strasburg.

Aim: In his talk, Nicolas Pallikarakis will give a thirty-year overview of the evolution in the domain of Medical Technology and its relationship with Biomedical Engineering Education. He will present the case of a unique European collaboration program in BME and will elaborate the direct and indirect benefits of such a joint effort.

Speaker: Dr Saverio Stranges, Scientific Director of the Department of Population Health at the Luxembourg Institute of Health. Dr Stranges has been appointed as the Scientific Director of the Department of Population Health at the Luxembourg Institute of Health. Previously, he was an Associate Clinical Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology in the Division of Health Sciences at the University of Warwick Medical School, where he has been for about nine years (2006-2015). Within Warwick University, he was also Director of the Academic Clinical Training in Public Health, as well as Honorary Consultant Physician in Public Health Medicine at the University Hospital of Coventry & Warwickshire, working in the Lipid & Coronary Prevention Clinics.

Aim: this will be an interactive session addressing the main criteria and issues in inferring causal associations in epidemiological studies.

Speaker: Stefania Manetti, PhD candidate in Healthcare Innovation Management at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa (Italy), where she graduated with honors in Biomedical Engineering in 2014. In 2016, she visited the Public Health Sciences Department of Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden) to work on parametric survival models and their application in decision models. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Health Economics Research Center (HERC), University of Oxford, to investigate the impact of hospital costing methods on cost-effectiveness analysis. Her research interests include Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and early HTA for innovative medical devices, cost-effectiveness analysis and decision models. Stefania is also the President of the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcome Research (ISPOR) Student chapter at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies.

Aim: After introducing the main principles of the cost-effectiveness approach consistent with the mainstream Health Technology Assessment (HTA) framework, this talk will explore the early HTA state of art and whether it could support the development process and provide a more solid foundation for the next phase of the reimbursement strategy.

Room/time: room D202, School of Engineering, University of Warwick, 14:00.

Speaker: Adriana Velazquez is the senior adviser and focal point on medical devices at the World Health Organization (WHO). She is a Mexican Biomedical Engineer with postgraduate degree in Clinical Engineering in U.S.A. Previous to join WHO she was the founding and General Director of the National Centre for Health Technology Excellence (CENETEC) in the Ministry of Health in Mexico, where she had more than 15 years experience as clinical engineer in private and public hospitals in Mexico. She has had honorary positions in national and international professional organizations.

Aim: After introducing the WHO leadership priorities, this talk will illustrate challenges and opportunities for biomedical engineering, which are willing to design and develop medical devices for low and middle income countries (LMIC).

Project: This talk is part of a meeting organized by the ABSPIE lab, in collaboration with the IFMBE HTAD, in the framework of the project titled “HTA of Medical Devices, with a specific focus on LMIC” (PI, Dr Leandro Pecchia), funded by EPSRC IAA Award and the Warwick GRP on Science and Technology for Health.

Room/time: room F105, School of Engineering, University of Warwick, 12:00.

Speaker: Professor Daniel Clark, Head of Clinical Engineering, Nottingham University Hospital NHS Trust, Director CHEATA – Centre for Healthcare Equipment And Technology Adoption Co-Director – CHT – Centre for Healthcare Technologies Expert Member – Medical Technology Advisory Committee – NICE

Aim: This seminar will introuce ABSPIE postgrad students to the role and importance of technology in healthcare; looking at the benefits and challenges of developing and introducing new and innovative technologies.

This talk will be broadcast live for the First Global Clinical Enginering Day #GlobalCEDay, in cooperation with IFMBE,