Clinical engineering? Biomedical equipment services? Clinical systems support?

At hospitals across the country, the biomedical equipment technician's department - the one responsible for making sure high-tech equipment works - goes by different names. And a group of biomeds wants to change that.

At a meeting later this month, more than two dozen engineers, technicians, researchers and corporate leaders will gather to pick a name for the profession.

"It would be nice to go next door and tell a neighbor that I work in, let's say 'biomed,' and they would identify with that just as they identify with the term 'doctor' or 'nurse,'" Dustin Telford, a clinical engineer at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, told the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, which is organizing the meeting.

The meeting's 25 participants include AAMI officials, the team chief of the Air Force's biomedical programming, the director of clinical engineering for Loyola University Medical Center and a program manager from GE Healthcare, according to a statement on AAMI's website.

Representatives from The Joint Commission and ECRI Institute will also attend the two-day conference, held April 28 and 29 at AAMI's headquarters in Arlington, Va.

About half of AAMI's 6,000 members are biomedical equipment technicians (alternatively: biomedical engineering technologists), according to Patrick Bernat, director of health care technology management for the group.

The exact breakdown of what departments are called nationwide isn't really known, though, AAMI said.

"We're in the midst of gathering that kind of data now via a survey in preparation for the meeting, but unfortunately I'm not aware of anything being published along those lines previously," Bernat told DOTmed News by e-mail.

DOTmed News' hasty, informal poll of a few local Manhattan hospitals found "Department of Clinical Engineering" appeared to be the preferred nomenclature in the area. "We just call them 'biomeds,'" a staffer at the New York Downtown Hospital said, when asked what the department was called.

AAMI's survey to find out what the community likes, and doesn't like, will be live until April 15. To take it, go here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KNQ65XG

What do you think biomeds should be called? Does it even matter? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

More Industry Headlines