ECRI—an independent organization that provides healthcare technology and safety guidance—released an enhanced technology solution designed to improve new product and standardization decisions.

Designed for value analysis committees, the decision-support technology solution will help with healthcare product and standardization, featuring clinical evidence content and additional intelligence to guide technology procurement.

“The healthcare supply chain has faced incredible challenges and undergone transformational changes during the pandemic,” says Marcus Schabacker, MD, PhD, president and CEO, ECRI. “We understand these challenges and are designing improved solutions to help hospitals and health systems make transparent, evidence-based technology decisions that will reduce costs and improve patient outcomes.”

ECRI’s Value Analysis Workflow offers unique transparency into the healthcare decision making process to strengthen engagement by physicians and collaboration with other team members. It is also scalable to meet healthcare systems’ current and future needs.

This is the first time that ECRI has embedded the full breadth of their proprietary medical technology intelligence into a single software application. Value analysis teams have access to a range of resources, including 2,500 clinical evidence assessments; the largest and most comprehensive dataset of pricing on equipment, supplies and services; functionally equivalent product alternatives; and product safety data. The decision support tool also includes product test results based on evaluations conducted in ECRI’s independent medical device laboratory.

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A fully scalable product, Value Analysis Workflow enables healthcare systems to:

  • Accelerate system-wide decisions on new health technology requests—organizes and automates projects, tasks, and content all in one place
  • Adopt a best-in-class approach using best-practice standard workflows—connects to superior clinical evidence content, proprietary pricing and comparison intelligence, and patient safety data
  • Engage physicians, clinicians, and supply chain leaders—with transparency into the workflow progress and technology decision making

“While some value analysis teams are just starting to adopt more automated and streamlined processes, others are already high performers focused on reducing waste and variability through standardization and clinically driven decision making,” says Stuart Morris-Hipkins, chief solutions officer at ECRI. “The beauty of our new workflow tool is that it can be scaled to meet our members’ specific needs, right now and in the future as they grow and mature their value analysis process.”