HTM has momentum, but awareness still lags behind. Strategic advocacy could change that.
By Alyx Arnett
When I saw US News & World Report rank “medical equipment repairer” among the top 15 “Best Jobs You’ve Never Heard Of,” it felt like validation for a career path that’s long gone underrecognized: healthcare technology management (HTM). As someone who covers this field daily, the ranking isn’t surprising, but it’s a reminder of just how much work remains to raise public awareness of this essential profession.
Even as HTM professionals play a critical role in advancing healthcare, their work remains largely unknown outside the industry. From my perspective, that lack of recognition is one of the biggest hurdles to growth. If we want to strengthen this profession’s future, we need a more unified, intentional effort to raise its profile.
Starting With Better Branding
For years, the HTM field has faced a branding challenge, so it was no surprise to Roger Bowles, CBET, EdD, that it showed up (again) on a list of jobs people have never heard of. (Similar rankings go back at least a decade.) “I still think that the variety of names assigned to this job is probably one of the reasons,” says Bowles, who teaches in the department of biomedical equipment technology at Texas State Technical College and serves on 24×7’s advisory board. “Medical equipment repair, biomedical equipment technician, healthcare technology management, plus several others, can describe very similar job functions.”
Federal job classifications don’t help either. As Stephen Grimes, principal consultant at Strategic Healthcare Technology Associates LLC and a 24×7 advisory board member, points out, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks job growth for “medical equipment repairers”—a category projected to grow 18.4% from 2023 to 2033—but doesn’t separately recognize titles like biomedical equipment technician or clinical engineer. Clinical engineering is instead lumped under broader roles like bioengineering. That lack of precision makes it harder to measure the profession’s full impact—and harder to advocate for it.
This fragmentation can also make it harder for students to discover the field, harder for school counselors to advise toward it, and harder for employers to classify and promote it consistently. The result? A profession in high demand that remains, for many, hidden in plain sight. That’s why a clearer, more consistent approach to branding—starting with standardized terminology—isn’t just helpful; it’s necessary.
Why Advocacy Must Scale Up
Grimes believes that real change will require coordinated advocacy—not just by individuals but by the professional organizations that represent them.
“While the contributions of individual HTM professionals are important in raising the visibility of HTM, the truth is that HTM professional organizations are going to be better equipped to have a greater impact in raising an awareness of and demand for HTM involvement in the healthcare delivery process,” says Grimes.
That means going beyond internal conversations and engaging directly with both regulators and influential players in healthcare delivery. On the regulatory side, Grimes points to agencies like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the US Food and Drug Administration, state health departments, and accrediting bodies such as The Joint Commission and the Center for Improvement in Healthcare Quality. On the stakeholder side, he emphasizes the value of forging ties with healthcare associations representing hospital executives, clinicians, finance leaders, risk managers, and engineers.
“This organization-to-organization level engagement is going to be the most effective way to reach out to those critical stakeholders who are ultimately in the best position to retain and make effective use of HTM professionals in healthcare delivery,” Grimes says.
These efforts can take many forms: publishing HTM-related content in stakeholder journals, hosting joint sessions at conferences, or inviting regulators and administrators to speak at HTM events. Real visibility won’t come from behind-the-scenes work alone; it requires showing up in the right rooms, with the right message.
A Model for Collaboration
HTM organizations have made attempts to collaborate in the past, but sustaining those efforts has proven difficult. As Grimes notes, “AAMI, ACCE, and HIMSS have established a collaborative community in 2008 and a healthcare technology alliance in 2017. But both efforts eventually lost focus, and the collaboration unfortunately petered out.”1
Rather than serving as a critique, this history should be seen as a call to action. As healthcare technology becomes more complex and interconnected, so too does the need for coordinated advocacy. Without a unified voice, HTM risks remaining underrecognized.
Grimes suggests the HTM community may benefit from looking beyond its own borders for inspiration. He points to the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) as a potential model for lasting, cross-sector collaboration. AIMBE unites four distinct but interconnected groups: leaders in biomedical engineering, academic institutions, professional societies, and industry stakeholders. By aligning education, workforce development, and advocacy across these sectors, the organization offers a possible blueprint for HTM.
“Theoretically, it should be easy to bring these shared interest groups together to ensure relevant education, advocacy, and work roles. Perhaps an arrangement like this could be used as a starting point,” Grimes says. That kind of integrated model could also strengthen the pipeline of future professionals by connecting HTM organizations and academia in a way that helps students discover and prepare for the field.
For HTM, a sustainable alliance could be the missing link between recognition and progress.
A Critical Need, A Shared Responsibility
Despite ongoing challenges, Bowles says he’s seeing signs of progress. “I do think that we have made great strides in getting it more recognized,” he says. “At least now it is probably more heard of than it used to be.”
One positive trend: younger students are entering the field. “I’ve noticed that over the past 10 years or so, the average age of our students has decreased, and we are getting more people straight out of high school enrolling in our program,” says Bowles.
Still, widespread awareness remains elusive. HTM isn’t just about fixing equipment, as the title “medical equipment repairer” suggests; it’s about managing the entire lifecycle of increasingly complex medical technology. When the profession is reduced to a repair function, it reinforces a perception gap that can hinder recruitment and obscure its broader impact.
Grimes puts it plainly: “It can be argued that there is a critical need for HTM services in healthcare delivery if we are to realize the potential of emerging technologies that will enhance the quality and accessibility of healthcare both domestically and globally.”
But that future depends on action now. Awareness doesn’t grow on its own. It takes sustained effort—from professional societies, educators, industry leaders, and current HTM professionals themselves—to tell this story clearly, consistently, and often.
“I believe it will continue to be a rewarding career path for decades to come,” Bowles says. But for too many, it’s still the best job they’ve never heard of.
Let’s change that.
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Reference
- Grimes S. Commentary: How can a fractured healthcare technology support industry hope to be effective? Biomed Instrum Technol. 2019;53(4):286-8.
Deja vu all over again. Short versions:
I remember early in our HIMSS collaboration days when HIMSS Analytics published a report recommending IT subsume HTM. It was a topic worthy of discussion but not a jump to a conclusion.
When adopting the name HTM was first brought, it was recommended to be not the name for our field but rather our profession. That really set me off. My profession was and remains engineering, and I let AAMI et al know it.
Ok, so that was a bit hyperbolic, but I also said changing our name was akin to rearranging ye olde Titannic deck chairs.
Ok, so that was hyperbolic, too. But the name has stuck, and that’s fine. But what difference has it made?
I like the suggestions in the article for things to attempt going forward. I suggest adding a retrospective analysis of prior attempts. What has the name change /adoption accomplished that moved things forward? What did it hinder? Ditto the association with HIMSS, hardly an organization HTM can ignore..
The field really is a key participant in the national healthcare enterprise. I believe making visible why that is so is important, and that appears to be on the list.
Run with it.