ECRI Now

As generative AI technologies get more attention on social media, in the news, and even Hollywood labor disputes, providers are putting a new focus on how AI is used in healthcare. ECRI’s Senior Engineering Manager Erin Sparnon joins us to discuss how AI is already being used, how AI developers are learning to overcome racial biases that may have been baked in to AI training data in the past, and how organizations can prepare for even more AI development and implementation.

A pair of exam gloves may cost only 10 cents, but ECRI estimates that U.S. healthcare providers spend more than a half billion dollars on exam gloves each year. In this episode, Julie Miller, a Principal Project Engineer at ECRI, describes how she tests exam gloves in real-world conditions to make sure they stretch, bend, and come on and off readily to protect wearers from infectious diseases.

Direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) came onto the market only recently, but are widely prescribed, displacing drugs that have been available since the 1950s. Jose Nery, a Safe Medication Management Fellow with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), discusses errors related to DOACs reported to ECRI and the ISMP Patient Safety Organization, and strategies that pharmacists and patients can use to limit those risks.

Most patients will never come into contact with the risk manager when they go to the hospital or the doctor's office. But without the risk manager, a crucial layer of umbrella-like protection would be missing to ensure their care is safe and effective. Our guest, Cailin Madrigale, a Risk Management Analyst at ECRI, describes the role risk managers play as we celebrate their contributions during Healthcare Risk Management Week.

ECRI has tested anesthesia machines for decades, adapting our evaluations to account for advances in technology. Brad Bonnette, a Senior Project Officer in ECRI’s Device Evaluation team, describes some of the newest features designed to help providers ensure that patients are maintained at the right level of sedation, and how ECRI expects to see these and similar features adopted going forward.

When patients are at risk for falling or self-harm, hospitals may assign staff or volunteers to sit with them and call if help is needed. If those patients need to be isolated, as in the case of infection control concerns, sitters could be put at risk by being in the same room. ECRI’s Priyanka Shah, a Senior Project Officer in Device Evaluation, has been evaluating remote monitoring telesitting devices to address this need.

Skilled nursing communities manage long term care patients with some of the most intense care needs, with the danger of falling being one of their biggest risks. We spoke with Alex Adams, an Aging Services Analyst and Consultant with ECRI, to discuss the challenges these providers face and how to balance care and patient autonomy.

As networked healthcare devices become more prevalent, healthcare organizations can be increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks. We spoke with Juuso Leinonen, a Principal Project Officer in Device Evaluation at ECRI, to discuss how those vulnerabilities are evolving and what organizations can do to reduce their risk.