Virtual course for the Americas: Healthcare technology planning and management over the life cycle

Clinical engineers are well suited as healthcare technology planning and management leaders working with stakeholders from clinical, administrative and other healthcare professions. However, education and training in this topic for healthcare professionals is limited outside the high income, developed countries. To provide accessible training and education to the low and middle income countries, a 100% virtual course, Healthcare Technology Planning and Management, was developed by the Technical Services Partnership—University of Vermont USA, a WHO Collaborating Center for Health Technology Management, to teach students on best practices to follow over the healthcare technology life cycle: assessment, replacement, budgeting, acquisition, deployment, training, patient safety, compliance and maintenance. The global state of medical devices, information systems and the convergence of technologies is part of the learning along with the setup and operation of a clinical engineering department in a healthcare system. The Healthcare Technology Planning and Management bi-lingual course was first taught on the Pan American Health Organization Virtual Campus for Public Health in 2015 to participants from the Caribbean and Latin America countries. The course was conducted a second time over a 15-week period in 2017. Overall, 96 students have successfully completed the course. The course showed significant interaction and engagement by participants in discussion boards and forums. For the next course session, it is hoped that the course will be translated to Portuguese with adaptation to Brazil to allow a three language offering. Also live workshops focused on solving real life healthcare technology challenges in the Americas are planned.