Nearly 70% of more than 200 medical repair professionals surveyed by U.S. PIRG Education Fund, U.S. PIRG’s sister organization, say that their hospital has had to “delay a patient procedure because [they] were waiting on a manufacturer service representative to fix a device.”
Thursday, August 6, may go down as a monumental day in the Right to Repair movement: Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Yvette D. Clark introduced legislation into Congress that would eliminate hospitals’ roadblocks for repairing medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. 24x7 editor Keri Forsythe-Stephens shares more about why this was so significant.
Since March 2015, the FDA has been collecting information and receiving factual and anecdotal comments concerning whether there is a public health and safety issue that warrants increased regulation and oversight of medical device companies and individuals. This issue culminated in October’s two-day workshop of presentations to the FDA, which biomedical expert Patrick Lynch details in the latest installment of The LynchPin.
A new report by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund details the challenges that medical professionals face as a result of device manufacturers setting up barriers to repair and outlines steps to help hospitals.
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Novel times call for novel solutions—a truth that certainly rings true in the case of inventive healthcare technology management (HTM) professionals. Just look at how they are handling ventilators amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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IFixit.com, which 24×7 Magazine profiled in depth recently, has received a letter from a medical equipment provider claiming that the website violated its copyrights.
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Below, Kit Walsh, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, shares what she perceives to be the latest threat against the Right to Repair movement.
Read MoreiFixit.com is a free repair site with information on how to fix everything from iPhones to kitchen appliances. Now, medical devices are included in that list. iFixIT CEO Kyle Wiens breaks down the site here.
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An unlikely group of individuals has joined the Right to Repair movement in response to the COVID-19 crisis: a group of state officials.
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U.S. PIRG delivered a letter to congressional lawmakers on Monday, May 18, signed by 326 hospital repair experts, calling for manufacturers to stop withholding what HTM professionals need to repair medical equipment, such as ventilators.
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What if there was a central resource that was up to date with all the latest manuals that BMETs need? For the last two months, iFixit has been building just that—a medical equipment service database.
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Public advocacy group U.S. PIRG and the American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE) have coauthored a letter advocating for increased cooperation between original equipment manufacturers, hospital-based HTM professionals, and independent service organizations.
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Here, Gay Gordon-Byrne, the executive director of The Repair Association, shares how the COVID-19 pandemic has cast a spotlight on the Right to Repair movement and what this may mean for the future.
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Below, Colorado Association of Biomedical Technicians President Leticia Reynolds and Kevin O’Reilly, the Right to Repair Campaign advocate for U.S. PIRG., share how the COVID-19 pandemic has cast a spotlight on the Right to Repair and why they believe HTM professionals needs repair manuals—now.
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The Right to Repair is a major issue in the HTM field—and it’s one that has been illuminated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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