Clinical engineering in medical technology assessment

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify the participation of clinical engineering in medical technology assessment (MTA); to assess the viability of implementing a MTA in public health care organizations in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil; and to discuss the tools that clinical engineer could use in the MTA within this context. Literature review has revealed few participation of clinical engineering in MTA at a macro level, and a significant participation at an institutional level, particularly in private hospitals in the USA. The implementation of a program of MTA at an institutional level could be feasible in the health care organizations (HCOs) that have been surveyed but the importance of MTA as a helpful tool in decision-making should be good understood by hospital administrators and governmental financial backer. The results from MTA in different HCOs would enable to improve the efficiency of allocation of resources performed by governmental entities to public HCOs. However, because of the short period in which teams of clinical engineering work in HCOs, much information about medical technologies in these HCOs are not available. This issue, together with the short knowledge about tools for MTA, it could restrict the implementation of programs of MTA in these HCOs.