AAMI’s Supportability Task Force has released a tool designed to help healthcare delivery organizations (HDOs) work more effectively with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) when considering a medical device for purchase. The Service-Level Agreement (SLA) Template helps set mutual expectations for HDOs and OEMs—groups that don’t always see eye-to-eye—to improve their working relationship.

“The SLA Working Group was aiming to provide OEMs and HTMs with a starting point that will enable the parties to iron out definable terms and thus increase trust between them,” says Michael Capuano, a biomedical technology manager for Ontario-based Hamilton Health Sciences and project lead for the template’s development.

Using the template, HDOs can create a custom contract to specify responsibilities for training, parts availability, service manual access, and more. Plus, the template is modular so HDOs can select what they need to craft a contract that is most relevant to them.

“The template is meant to be tailored to your specific needs—you can take the bits and pieces that are applicable to your HDO, department, or device,” says Patrick Bernat, director of healthcare technology management at AAMI.

The free template is available at www.aami.org/SLAT.