The healthcare sector faces a pressing need for more engineers, according to a new report from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE).
In the report Healthcare Solutions: Elevating the Engineering Workforce, the Institution said that with patient numbers rising, and healthcare technology advancing rapidly, new engineers with clinical and technical skills are needed to ensure that technology is being deployed efficiently and effectively across the health service.
The report also calls for healthcare engineers to have increased authority and decision-making powers to encourage recruitment and ensure new technology is designed and adopted in the safest, most effective way.
“If we are to learn from global crises such as the COVID pandemic, it is that 21st century medicine can only be delivered with significant amounts of technology and, that care at home is just as critical as care in hospitals,” said Dr Helen Meese, lead author of the report and Vice Chair of the Institution’s Biomedical Engineering Division.
The NHS has a workforce of around 1.5 million people, but the number of clinical engineers is relatively small compared to this, around 3000-3,500 professionals.
“Unlike clinicians there is little uniform recognition of engineers’ contribution, particularly in the hospital environment,” added Dr Meese. “These engineers often operate at varying levels of authority and have limited input into critical decision-making.”
In a parallel report, Healthcare Solutions: Improving Technology Adoption, the Institution calls for the government and healthcare providers to develop national ‘complete life-cycle’ strategies for technology adoption within the NHS. It recommends strategic planning of technology to be used for remote patient monitoring and in GP practices.
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The Institution recommends that two new healthcare engineering roles be created: a Chief Healthcare Engineer for every hospital in the country; and Patient-Enablement Engineers and Technicians to work in the social care system.
It argues that a network of chief healthcare engineers with decision making abilities would not only promote best practice in the procurement, maintenance and use of medical equipment but increase the opportunity for cost savings across the healthcare service. Meanwhile, engaging engineers with social care would help ease the burden on an overwhelmed system by helping to drive the deployment of technologies that enable patients top be treated at home.
At first glance this seems to be very important leadership by the IMechE, but on thinking further there are some problems. Many years ago there used to be Hospital Engineers who looked after machinery in the service: they could be very difficult to deal with but looked after the boiler plant, laundries and other machinery. Then, came the Thatcher economy and these units were quickly replaced by contracted-out services. This, of course, broke the then-evil unionised control, but is without any doubt now paying large profits to the services-providers, which increase the direct costs of services.
It is this “bought-out” service that needs to be replaced first with control of services back within the NHS where they belong.
Regarding engineers in the social care sector, great idea but this is one of the worst paid sectors in the health care area and, unless massive changes occur, will unfortunately remain so.
JB’s engineers seem to be maintenance jobs, the I Mech E is addressing the need for more higher level Professional Engineers at Chartered level who would be I Mech E and IET. I turned down a Hospital Group Chief Engineer’s role because of the subservient outlook of the Management Board. These roles should not be confused with Medical Physics staff who seemed be around at the time.
Sorry if I was not fully clear, Ken, I was discussing the time (1970s to 1990s) when hospitals had Engineering departments that were more or less what the I.Mech.E. is asking for. They employed technicians and qualified engineers to looks after all of the hospitals engineered services, including maintenance. This is now looked on as a purchasing activity to procure sub-contracted services. This is an accountancy trick as is moves the costs off the direct (employment and capital) costs into a running-cost. The foolishness is that the running cost is bigger than the directs would be but politically seems better. The net effect is that hospitals now employ very few engineers directly.
Medical engineering; being creative and ingenious in a medical context sounds to be a real winner.
However it has been said that 70% of the most important (medical) innovations come from outside the medical establishment; clearly it would be better if this where not so?
It is not clear, from the article, what medical engineers might be and what they do.
There is already much done in terms of bought in engineering (CT, NMR etc…scans, endoscopes, as well as medical actuators – such as for “keyhole” surgery). But having medical engineers (including software engineers) identified as a body of people who develop novel approaches to solutions, applications and problems would be, I think, have many useful and innovative outcomes.
I suspect that there would be a need for a system that recognises engineers (of all sorts) as part of a medical team (which might require an administrative change of thought) and appropriate recruiting and training.
However engineers might also need to be trained, or learn about, advanced composites (eg in biological machines or moluscular mechanisms) and diffusion (as a process or mechanisms). I am not sure how well mechanical engineers are trained in such – or , indeed, control or software engineers. So perhaps the IET could establish a appropriate syllabi ?