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Editor’s  Corner
What Should Clinical Engineering Professionals Know?

As the year comes to an end (thank god), to say that 
2020 was a devastating year would be an understatement. 
All over the world, the virus-causing pandemic kept the 
infection spreading, mutating, and pounding everything 
without relief and leading to the loss of precious lives, dev-
astated economies, forced social isolation, and misery we 
never knew was possible. We are experiencing a changing 
world, and perhaps never did we need to support each 
other more than we do now. We each do it in our own 
way within groups of families and friends and by further 
backing colleagues as members of the clinical engineering 
community. Will, how, or what impact the pandemic will 
have on future clinical engineers (CEs) and technologists 
is not yet known. The question now is, how should future 
CEs be better prepared for what is to come? 

One lesson learned from this abnormal pandemic era 
is the need for better technology lifecycle management 
methodology and tools. In healthcare past, the timeline 
separating discovery and innovation, from use to benefits, 
was measured in multiples of years. However, the success 
of Operation Warp Speed1 has demonstrated how rapidly 
accelerated development and approval for the COVID-19 
vaccine can be completed. We are ready to meet similar 
growing challenges such as the lack of mechanical venti-
lators, oxygen generators, personal protective gear, and 
isolated care spaces within similar accelerated timelines. 
These timelines have been shortened from years to months 
and, in some instances, even less. Through interdisciplinary 
collaboration (such as automotive and medical product 
manufacturing) and international research cooperation 
(such as the UK, Germany, and USA) we have seen multiple 
medical triumphs, technological advances, and engineer-
ing solutions (public-private alliances) that have forever 
altered previous conventional approaches.

The medical device industry has changed forever, and 
the forces that currently shape it will drive rethinking 

and expectations into the future. Product innovation 
and development will become processes that are much 
closer to a specific patient’s needs, demographics, and 
experiences. Modifying hospitals to also act as medical 
technology laboratories. The number of people in the 
world age 60 years and over is expected to grow by 56%, 
reaching nearly 1.5 billion by 2030.2 This suggests that 
care expectations will increase. In response, further de-
mand will be placed on personalized care that is already 
being supported by extended reality (both virtual and 
augmented) tools and creative wearable products with 
embedded intelligence that can modify their function in 
response to the data collected. 

As I touch on lessons learned from the past year and 
on the anticipation for the creative future that has already 
begun to impact the healthcare industry, it begs the 
question: what about clinical engineering practitioners 
and members of the front-line healthcare team heroes? 
What is in-store for them? The demand for better access to 
and future growth in provisioning of healthcare services 
will undoubtedly magnify the system’s dependence on 
technological tools, their performance, and integration. 
This will translate into stronger demand for competent 
clinical engineering education and expertise. However, if 
everything around us is changing, and we chose to stay 
statically stationed, the opportunity will fade and perhaps 
be picked up by others. It is critically significant, therefore, 
that clinical engineering practitioners demonstrate the 
pursue of the following E.S.P. attributes that will deliver 
an advantage to their ability to successfully fulfill their 
future duties and to reach greater on-the-job satisfaction:

Education – Increase your knowledge and expand your 
expertise to include subjects like artificial intelligence, 
digital health (telehealth/telemedicine/eHealth), extended 
reality, robotics, cybersecurity, wireless communications, 
and big data that are all part of the coming fields in need 
of engineering champions at the point-of-care.

http://www.globalce.org
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J Global Clinical Engineering Vol.4 Issue 1, 2020  2

Stewardship – Understand your role expectations, 
learn to communicate clearly and rapidly, be reliant and 
provide update/follow-ups on projects assigned to you, do 
not avoid responsibility, and always be passionate about 
keeping equipment safe and patient-ready supporting 
the quality-of-care outcomes. Remember, patients cannot 
fend for themselves. They depend on you to carry out 
your responsibilities. 

Professionalism – Members of healthcare teams are 
educated, credentialed in their field, engage with their 
society’s activities, collaborate with peers, read, and 
publish in their field’s literature. CEs need to embrace 
such attributes and do it now to ensure you gain a seat 
at the table. 

Specific examples in our own field provide evidence 
supporting the need for more international collaboration 
and stronger professional knowledge exchange as they 
are going to be part of our future. The Call for Papers 
for the 4th International Clinical Engineering and Health 
Technology Management Congress, scheduled to be held 
in Orlando, Florida, USA coming September 2021, is still 
open; however, it already broke the record established 
last year in Rome for the number of abstracts submitted 
(reaching almost 350). Further, this past October’s inau-
guration of the new Global Clinical Engineering Alliance3 
is yet more evidence that as healthcare and technology 
are changing so are the needs in our field. These changes 
magnify the increasing dependency between CEs, educa-
tors, practitioners and the persistent ensuring that goal 
for the intended care outcomes. As this is becoming more 
evident it mandates clinical engineering practitioners to 
declare their professional boundaries and become stew-
ards for patient safety and care quality by updating their 
expertise and building opportunities for growing their 
professional competencies through training, reading, 
and networking. As CEs, your ability to use knowledge 
for solving system problems reliably, safely, and quickly 

should be the navigating lights leading all of us into a 
brighter, happier future. 

The Global Clinical Engineering Journal and its Edito-
rial Board experts will back you up and focus on sharing 
knowledge internationally, identifying best practices, 
communicating lessons learned, and highlighting inno-
vations to make sure you are in the best position and are 
prepared to claim your seat at the table.

We send you our very best wishes for fewer air hugs 
and more bear hugs in the coming new year!

REFERENCES

1. Swan J. COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution — Challenges 
and Perhaps Opportunities [Internet]. The Hill. 
Available at: https://thehill.com/opinion/health-
care/522036-covid-19-vaccine-distribution-challeng-
es-and-perhaps-opportunities

2. Haseltine WA. Aging populations will challenge 
healthcare systems all over the world. Forbes April 
2 2018. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/
williamhaseltine/2018/04/02/aging-populations-
will-challenge-healthcare-systems-all-over-the-
world/?sh=7160c1952cc3

3. Global Clinical Engineering Alliance. Homepage. Avail-
able at: https://www.globalcea.org/home 

Together we are making it better!

Dr. Yadin David
Copyright © 2021. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY): Creative Commons - Attribu-
tion 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0. The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) 
are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is 
permitted which does not comply with these terms.

http://www.globalce.org
http://www.globalce.org
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/522036-covid-19-vaccine-distribution-challenges-and-perhaps-opportunities
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/522036-covid-19-vaccine-distribution-challenges-and-perhaps-opportunities
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2018/04/02/aging-populations-will-challenge-healthcare-systems-all-over-the-world/?sh=7160c1952cc3
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2018/04/02/aging-populations-will-challenge-healthcare-systems-all-over-the-world/?sh=7160c1952cc3
https://www.globalcea.org/home

