14th October 2022

The BEAI would like to congratulate all of the winners at the recent Annual Scientific Conference.

1. BEAI Early Career Award

The inaugural BEAI Early Career Award was won by Jessica Fitzpatrick from the Medical Physics & Clinical Engineering Department at Beaumont Hospital for her research on ‘3D Printing to Create Neurosurgical Workflows & Contribute to Neurosurgical Training & Education.’ The BEAI introduced this award in 2022 in recognition of a single achievement in Biomedical / Clinical Engineering. Allocating this grant allows the BEAI to support the pipeline of young Clinical Engineers coming into the profession & its use towards future career development. Jessica impressed the judges by indicated how she intended to invest this grant to enhance her department but also how it can assist Jessica in furthering her research.

2. Clinical Engineering Healthcare Technology Support

This Clinical Engineering Healthcare Technology Support Award was also awarded for the first time at the BEAI Annual Scientific Conference. The is given to a Healthcare Technology Supplier in recognition of their excellent support service for equipment, medical devices and other health technologies in operation in the Irish healthcare system using the following criteria:

• Responsiveness
• Technical Knowledge & Expertise
• Clinical / Technical Knowledge
• Suitability of Documentation
• Patient Focus
• Understanding of Client Needs
• Innovative Solutions Orientation
• Value for Money

The BEAI received multiple submissions with 8 different Medical Technology Suppliers being nominated. Based on the feedback received from our members, the winner of The Clinical Engineering Healthcare Technology Support Award was Cardiac Services.

3. Best Spectrum Article

The best Spectrum Article of 2022 was judged by Professor Huge O’Donnell who is a Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering at Munster Technology College. This award was kindly sponsored by IFP Media. The feedback received from Professor O’Donnell’s was;

A very high standard evident and some really excellent articles. Some articles of note were ‘What do you want to be when you grow up? A Data Farmer!’ (Prof. Neil O Hare) and the paper on the use of portable Ultrasound devices by Community Midwives titled ‘Ultrasound Scanning in Women’s Health’ (Maighread Gallagher).  While the AI proposal/plan is on a grand scale, is very ambitious and really well articulated, the Ultrasound “project” had been more-or-less completed and was, perhaps, more “biomedical” in content. For articles that they are very much Biomedical Research in nature that deserve special mention are “Fabrication of Anisotropic Cardiac Patches with Synclastic Curvature Using Melt Electrospinning Writing” (Maryla Oshodi) and “Estimating 3D kinematics of the human body from Wearable Sensor Measurements” (Kate McDonald). From a readability and general interest point of view, the article by Anthony Enright, Richmond Hospital – “A Wander Down Memory Lane”, is fascinating and Anthony comes across as a most interesting character and a gifted biomedical engineer.

Leaving the best until last, the final outcome was an article from the autumn edition “The Clinical Engineering Response to Covid-19 in the Community” (by John Adlington, Liam Hackett & Aidan O’Toole from the Clinical Engineering Department, Midlands Regional Hospital, Tullamore) was the outright winner.  This is a compelling story of outstanding public service from a small team of clinical engineering technicians working with other state agencies such as the army.  This story and more like it from around the country should be in the national newspapers!

As previously said a very high standard of articles, the completion is challenging for the best article but please keep them coming as they are all very much worth reading.

4. Best Oral Presentation on the day

The Best Oral Presentation medal was kindly sponsored by Zehnacker Healthcare and awarded to John Tiernan, SeatTech Manager at Enable Ireland for his presentation on the, “Investigation of the viability of 3D printing methodologies as a means of manufacturing custom contoured wheelchair seating”.

Custom-contoured wheelchair seating refers to a seating system that may consist of a seat, a back support, or both types of cushions, that are based on and match the wheelchair user's body contours. Computer numerically controlled (CNC) manufacturing is the latest technique for producing custom-contoured seats. This method uses moulding bags to capture the shape of the end user, after which the contours of the moulding bag are converted into a digital model using a contact or non-contact scanner. The model is prepared for CNC production and the cushion or back support is carved from a block of foam. A state-of-the-art investigation performed for this project suggests that 3D printing custom seating would lower the costs of manufacturing; decrease the production time necessary to make a system; lower material waste during manufacturing; and lower the risk of pressure injury in users by designing and producing seats with less insulating properties.
Full-sized custom contoured wheelchair seat cushions were 3D printed. These prototypes underwent bench testing and user trials and further iterative design. There is still a way to go to arrive at a marketable solution, but we can conclude at this point that 3D printing technologies can be used to produce custom contoured wheelchair seating - something that was not possible just five years ago at the start of this project.

5. Poster Scientific

The award for the best Scientific Poster was kindly sponsored by Rockford Healthcare & won by Jessica Fitzpatrick from the Medical Physics & Clinical Engineering Department at Beaumont Hospital for her poster titled, ‘Two Heads Are Better Than One: Stereotactic EEG and Deep Brain Stimulation Surgery Workflow Refinement using 3D Printed Heads’.

6. Poster Engineering Management

The award for the best Engineering Management Poster was kindly been sponsored by Swords Medical & won by Malu Chandran from the Clinical Engineering Department at Cork University Hospital for her poster titled, ‘Biomedical Engineer – Design and Development of Excel Files for POCT Services’.

All of the poster submissions are available to view on the BEAI website at www.beai.ie

Following on from Mairead Dennehy’s BEng MSc presentation at the Annual Scientific Conference titled, “Postgraduate formal education for Clinical Engineers in Ireland: A current format and future requirements discussion”, the below link will provide access to Mairead’s survey. We kindly ask that you complete.

https://www.menti.com/alon6wzjrk9h

Mairead will make the results available in due course. Thank you for your participation.

Further information on the PgDip in Advanced Medical technologies can be found at the following link:

https://lit.ie/en-IE/Courses/Postgraduate-Diploma-in-Science-in-Advanced-Medica

Dear Colleagues / Webinar Registrants:

You will be able to view the two webinars below now and download their slides at this link: https://www.globalcea.org/webinars.  

GCEA is delighted to report that 750 unique individuals from over 100 countries registered for these Imaging Equipment webinars, with more to follow soon.

Please do us a favour and also complete this Body of Knowledge - Body of Practice survey no matter your Health Technology management background and current role. It takes only 5-minutes and will greatly assist GCEA and its partner IFMBE CED in their global CE/BME development efforts, survey link:  https://forms.gle/pm1y4CDHSKEMpbxK7

450 colleagues from over 110 countries have already completed this survey, but more will help us fine tune our work around CE-HTM Capacity Building, Impact Measurement, Credentialing and Policy.

Thanks again.

Tom Judd

for

Yadin David, GCEA Interim President

Fabiola Martinez, IFMBE CED Board Chair