BEAI Annual Scientific Meeting 2012

The Health Service in Pressure Cooker Mode

(The Current Demands on Professional Engineers Working in the Health Care Industry)

A Report from the 2012 BEAI Annual Scientific Meeting

Sponsor:

The BEAI’s Annual Scientific Meeting, held in the Clarion Hotel, Liffey Valley on Friday the 5^th of October, proved very popular with the biomedical engineering profession. The event was organised in association with the Biomedical Engineering Division of Engineers Ireland and endorsed by the IFMBE. The BEAI were delighted to have Olympus as sole event sponsors.

Networking

This event every year gives such an important chance for us in the Clinical/Biomedical Engineering profession to discuss our challenges and solutions too many situations, technical and managerial we face during the year with are peers throughout the country. The time spent over a coffee and a Danish whilst viewing the impressive technical display Olympus laid on is one of the highlights of this event for me.

Sponsors Presentation

Uwe Fischer gave a unique insight into different types of energy which have been used in the past for manipulating and treating biological tissue there advantages and disadvantages of certain energy technologies and surgical benefits of their combination in his presentation titled: ‘Energy Technologies for Surgical tissue Management’

Winning Presentations

Eleven speakers gave us a board base of information to ingest with Meabh Smith (Senior Clinical Engineer in the Department of Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering in Beaumont Hospital) and Michael Duane (Senior Clinical Engineer in the department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering at Galway University Hospital) both presenting so professionally with such interest to there given subjects that our Judges could not split the winning talks so both presenters won the BEAI’s solid silver medals of excellence. Michael for his presentation on ‘Development of an Online Knowledge Repository for a MPBE Department’ and Meabh for her Explanation of the Statutory Registration for Health & Social Care Professionals – Focus on Clinical Engineering)

BEAI’s Foundation History

Peter Grainger gave an excellent, positive history of the birth and growth of our association from it early roots until today (21^st anniversary this year) included in his talk were photographs of some founder members looking rather youthful which lifted our humour as the realization of working with in the ‘Pressure Cooker’ with reducing budgets daily is all to forefront in the Clinical Engineers minds during this recession.

Partnership

The BEAI would like to thank the sponsors of the 2012 event, Olympus Ireland. An Event of this success requires a strong partnership between the organisers and the sponsors. We have received fantastic feedback regarding the impressive showcase of specialist endoscopic and minimally invasive surgical equipment that was on display and the professional approach taken by Olympus that made this event a huge positive in the biomedical calendar.

Many thanks to:-

Sponsors

Staff at Olympus Ireland,

Presenters:

Uwe Fisher, Department Manager in R&D Olympus Surgical Technologies Hamburg.

Meabh Smith, Beaumont Hospital.

John McGivney, St Luke’s Radiation Oncology Network.

Patrick Pentony, Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown.

Peter Grainger, Naas General Hospital.

Michael Duane, Galway University Hospital.

John Mahady, AMNCH, Chair BEAI.

Martin Hargrove, CUH.

Marc Halligan, Olympus Ireland.

Steve Veck, Eurosurgical.

Alan Cunningham, Eurosurgical.

Chairs

Ronnie Mc Dermott, Cavan / Monaghan Hospitals.

Noel Murphy, CUH.

Paddy McGowan, Letterkenny General Hospital.

BEAI ASM Lead

Frank Kelly, SVUH. Scott Barkley OLCHC,