EBME


Hospitals are increasingly bringing in new technologies with connectivity. Whether building a new hospital or refurbishing, you need to make sure that you have a voice and that you are talking with the project team. It’s about getting into that room and explaining


struggle with technology – they simply press a button, then results go off to the hospital via WiFi. When the patient is finished with the equipment, it goes back into the box. A courier collects it and a third-party gets the box ready for the next patient. The third-party company retains the pool kit in an off-site workshop.


Hospital care at home Using this approach, the hospital can obtain vital signs information from the ‘virtual ward’, either prior to coming in for an operation, or to reduce the need to take up hospital beds post-operatively. The patients’ home environments also vary greatly which can present challenges with regards to medical technologies and the provision of therapies at home. For example, water quality and water pressures vary from house to house. The cleanliness of a patient’s house can also affect the management of equipment. “A key consideration is whether the device has a filter,”


Patients’ home environments vary greatly, which can present challenges with regards to medical technologies and the provision of therapies at home.


another EBME expert pointed out. “The cleanliness of patients’ homes isn’t necessarily what your home would be and if they have a lot of dust and nicotine, etc, things can get clogged.” The state of the patient’s home will dictate the frequency


of the maintenance required. So, how can this be assessed and managed in the community? Who will undertake this environmental assessment? Would it be a clinical engineering team or the manufacturer? And how can we sensitively manage discussions with patients about the cleanliness of their homes? “For visiting engineers,


there’s quite an emotional challenge as well because they get to know the patient really well and then they pass away. They have to go to the home and take the equipment out and the family is still mourning. It’s a really difficult situation,” one delegate shared. The resilience of equipment also needs to be considered. While hospitals have back- up generators, what happens when there is a power cut to a patient’s home? In the case of home dialysis, it is not time critical – the patient can simply wait until the power


70 Health Estate Journal November 2025


is back up. But the virtual ward will ultimately be limited in what it can deliver due to constraints around the home infrastructure. As one delegate pointed out, “You can work around a potential power cut for renal, but if you’re going to put an ICU at home, somebody is going to have to monitor that. You’ve got to have connectivity. What if the internet drops out? What if the power drops out, and the ventilator stops working? We are going to have to draw a line at some point. “The people around this room need to advise the


Trust and say, ‘you can’t do that, even if it looks like a great idea on paper, because these are the practical considerations…’ We need to be the people that are listened to and have that respect, when we say ‘no’.” “When it comes to technologies, let’s be honest, we


haven’t got a crystal ball,” another delegate interjected. “We don’t know what’s coming in the next decade. I think a lot of it will be about managing people’s wellbeing through prevention and managing long-term conditions – it will be about keeping people out of hospitals because it’s nicer to be at home. “I can imagine a situation where someone with a long- term condition wakes up, does their blood pressure, does their monitoring, does all their blood tests themselves and all of that gets transmitted through to some sort of central monitoring.” The panel highlighted that if we are sending patient information across the network that also needs to be secure. “I think the challenge is going to be knowing what


you’ve got and where it is. I think that’s still a big challenge. It is easier in an acute setting to do tracking, but there are some GPS technologies emerging. The price is still too expensive and can cost more than the asset, however,” one EBME leader commented. If the cost starts to come down, this may become more of an option in the future, they suggested. “We already have wearable technology coming through. It’s only a matter of time, I think,” another delegate commented.


Conclusion In conclusion, the panel highlighted that many of the issues discussed were not simply ‘clinical engineering issues’ – they are ‘common issues’. There is a need to make all stakeholders understand that clinical engineering is about medical device management and patient safety. The lifecycle of medical devices management needs to addressed, as a whole, by working collaboratively. Ultimately, medical technology management must be everyone’s concern – as patient safety is the overriding priority for all. Solving the issues highlighted in the Workshop will require a coordinated, multi-disciplinary approach. EBME experts need to have a strong voice and show effective leadership, if the government’s ambitious 10 Year Health Plan is to be delivered safely and cost-effectively. There will be significant challenges ahead in moving care out of hospitals, and the EBME sector needs to highlight these at an early stage and advise on potential solutions – before the ‘proverbial horse has bolted’. For further details on EBME Expo 2026 and future


workshops, visit the event webiste at: https://ebme-expo. com


Acknowledgement n This article was originally prepared for HEJ’s sister


publication, Clinical Services Journal. We are grateful to CSJ’s Editor Louise Frampton for kindly permitting its inclusion in this month’s issue.


AdobeStock / Tatiana


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