EBME
Exploring the challenges facing EBME
A Thought Leadership Workshop at EBME 2025 recently brought together Electro-Biomedical Engineering (EBME) experts to discuss key issues around medical equipment connectivity and technology’s impact on care delivery. CSJ provides an overview of the hot topics and challenges explored.
The Prime Minister has promised to “harness game-changing tech” as part of the 10- Year Health Plan, but what role will EBME departments have in integrating and managing these technologies? As these technologies become increasingly connected, do EBME departments have the skills and knowledge they need to support the government’s ambitions? What will be the impact of technology on patient care and how can clinical engineers ensure they are prepared? Furthermore, as the Government seeks
to move more care away from hospitals into the community, what challenges will there be from an EBME perspective? How can clinical engineers ensure the remote technology, required to implement the 10-Year Health Plan, will be safe, maintained and effectively connected? These were among the key issues discussed at the Thought Leadership Workshop, held at EBME Expo on the 26 June 2025. Chairing the Workshop was Iain Threlkeld,
Head of Clinical Engineering, at Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust. He pointed out that UK Trusts are increasingly looking at IT integration.
Medical devices are now being linked into the patient record and need to be connected to a plethora of rapidly evolving digital tools and artificial intelligence. The role of the clinical engineer needs to keep pace with this fast- paced changing landscape and the challenges
The key aims of the workshop
The Thought Leadership Workshop at EBME Expo is intended to bring professionals together to discuss common themes in a round table format. The first workshop was held at the 2024 Expo and a report on the session can be found in the September 2024 edition of CSJ (
https://tinyurl.com/36xk6c5y). All attendees took away ideas that they could introduce into their departments. and the workshop for 2025 continued this theme. Alongside this, the EMBE Expo Leaders’ Network brings together leaders in the field of EBME to drive professional development and better healthcare technology management. At a meeting held in London, several issues were
discussed. Coverage of this meeting can be viewed in the May 2025 edition of CSJ (https://
tinyurl.com/yc5k4aa7). This year, it was decided that a couple of these
issues would be taken to the Thought Leadership Workshop at EBME 2025 to hear how the challenges are being addressed in the workplace. These included the following topics: l Medical equipment connectivity and devices. l Technology’s impact on care delivery.
The aim of the workshop was to feed the discussions back to the EBME Leaders’ Network to give a more rounded view of the challenges that need to be addressed.
that this presents were explored during the Workshop. Iain Threlkeld asked delegates to consider:
l What developments could be introduced to take advantage of increased connectivity to improve patient care?
l How will integration be managed by the existing workforce?
l What do we need to consider, to get ready for the next steps on the journey?
Integration and connectivity challenges One delegate commented that patient monitoring technology used at their Trust has been integrated into EPIC software and links into the electronic patient record (EPR). However, one challenge, in particular, has been a lack of training around integration among clinical engineers. “It is not just the mechanical side that we are looking at,” they commented. “When we go to equipment, integration is part of the issue,” they continued. “The training needs to be ‘generic’ in terms of IT, rather than specific to an equipment manufacturer,” they explained. Other delegates pointed out that ageing
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