Changes in practice ahead for medical device technicians (UK)

Steve Hards

An item on the medtechinsider website by Andrew Parton, Joint Managing Director, of Hugo Technology manages to redefine both ‘telecare’ and ‘telehealthcare’ (as promulgated by Tunstall and adopted across the West Midlands, where Hugo Technology is based). At least he did define his terms instead of leaving us to guess. The redefinition, coupled with a silly headline: Why Telehealthcare Requires Your Engineers to Learn to Remove Their Shoes, gets his piece off to a bad start. However, he does make a valid point that as medical devices become smarter in terms of giving feedback to monitoring services, technicians who go out to service them in people’s homes will meet a new set of technical and cultural demands. [Will someone please comment on the original item and set them right about the terminology? I’ve done enough battling for one week. Editor Steve Update: Many thanks for those who did!]