Association Roundtable

Abstract

Insights and advice from leaders of local and state biomedical associationsWe have started a junior chapter of our Danish Society for biomedical engineering and they have seats on our board. This gives a revitalization of our society and our board. It gives early contact to future colleagues and better contact to the universities. And it gives the junior members a great network for their career.”Kim Dremstrup, PhD, President, Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering“After observing other association websites, we noted there was not much updating of information. Everything just seemed stagnant—something that is not good in a dynamic field such as healthcare technology management. Pursuant to the resolution of this challenge, our Information Blog was established. Each weekday a new helpful message is posted on the blog. It could be something about an upcoming webinar, a new best practice, a meeting announcement, or something technology oriented that affects our field. When these blog items are posted, our system automatically e-mails the post to our member and associate subscribers, which at this time total 246.”Dick Felton, Past President, Healthcare Technology Management Association of Ohio“We have always been involved with our local technical college. We recommend hiring talented individuals from other technical fields and training them in biomedical principles using our technical college. This way you help local individuals, the community, and create cost savings for the hospital.”Horace Hunter, Executive Director, Georgia Biomedical Instrumentation Society“We have begun two programs which are quite popular.“The first program is a certification study group. We've held weekly study groups at two Kansas City metro area hospitals which teleconference with the highly successful CABMET group. We augment that with additional training. For instance this year I taught a 2 hour X-ray fundamentals course. As a result of this program we've certified over 30 new CBET and CRES technicians. We've also held A+ training.“The other program we've instituted which seems quite popular is a raffle for a trip to the AAMI annual conference. A ticket is awarded to individuals who contribute something meaningful to the organization or profession. Examples would be teaching a class, writing an article which is published in a professional publication, or recruiting a new corporate sponsor.”Dan DeMaria, CBET, CRES, President, Healthcare Technology Management Association of the Midwest (HTMA-MW)