Medical Engineering
Health care technology is rapidly changing and proliferating. The Medical Engineering team is at the forefront of these exciting changes, bridging 
the engineering and clinical worlds to ensure the intended benefits of health care technology are realized.
Medical Engineering provides leadership for the technical management and support of health care technology. The technologies supported are as diverse as drug infusion devices, heart monitors, medical lasers, surgical instruments, x-ray systems, and laboratory equipment. The team works closely with clinicians, government, medical device manufacturers and IT vendors, and regulators to ensure technology and its associated work practices are safe and effective.
Our Team
The team consists of more than 50 professionals with backgrounds in various disciplines, including:
- Biomedical and clinical engineering
- Cognitive psychology
- Computer science and engineering
- Health sciences
- Industrial engineering
- Information technology
- Systems design engineering
A variety of project work and operational opportunities exist within SIMS for people with an engineering background/education. Skill sets that are used include biomedical and human factors knowledge, industrial engineering tools, decision support, lean principles in health care, operations research methodology, process re-engineering and statistical analysis.
In addition, there are opportunities to interact with engineers in any one of the SIMS partner organizations in various departments.
Our Work
Our scope of work spans the complete life cycle of health care technology:
- Research, Design and Development: The team is actively engaged in research through the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation. We develop applications integrating medical devices in the home and hospital with information systems that can effectively facilitate managing care;
- Medical Device Selection and Purchase: Staff is involved in the purchase of new patient-related, including its initial planning, technical and clinical evaluations, vendor negotiations, and specification of terms of purchase;
- Incoming Inspection of Medical Devices: All equipment entering clinical service is inspected for safety, proper operation and adherance to relevant standards prior to use;
- In-service Education: Staff provides a wide range of equipment-related education services to clinical staff ranging from formal training courses and credentialing more informal tutorials in clinical areas;
- Medical Device Repairs: Staff maintain nearly all patient-related medical devices used in the hospital and a wide variety of research and laboratory equipment;
- Performance Assurance: Life support and critical equipment is regularly inspected to ensure proper operation and safety;
- Incident Investigation: Incidents involving medical equipment are investigated promptly and recommendations are made to prevent recurrence;
- Medical Device Hazard Notification: Hazard and recall publications from regulatory bodies, manufacturers, and consulting firms are regularly reviewed to ensure prompt remedial action;
- Human Factors Analysis: The Medical Engineering team has the largest human factors program dedicated to improving health care in Canada. This group strives to improve patient care and safety through the application of human factors principles to ensure tools, technologies, processes and environments are safe and intuitive for end users. For more information, visit www.humanfactors.ca.
Professional Development: The Engineering Healthcare Committee
The Engineering Healthcare Committee (EHC) supports the transformation of health care delivery by collaborating and sharing best practices and engineering-specific learnings within the larger health care community. The EHC accomplishes this by building retention tactics to SIMS for Engineers and those with engineering qualifications and by promoting engineering-specific outreach and recruitment.
Specific objectives of the EHC include:
- Sharing experiences and knowledge in using engineering-related skills to tackle some of the issues the health care system is facing today;
- Presenting recommendations to SIMS senior management regarding processes, methods, templates, tools, etc. that will enable the purpose of the committee.