Glasgow event covered medical device safety

A variety of topics related to medical devices and equipment safety were discussed by speakers at the fourth Health Facilities Scotland (HFS) Incident Reporting & Investigation Centre (IRIC) Conference in Glasgow, with delegates drawn from a wide range of disciplines – from health and safety and occupational health to estates management, medical physics, and decontamination. Sulisti Holmes, head of Decontamination, and of the Incident Reporting Investigation Centre, at Health Facilities Scotland, reports.

The fourth Health Facilities Scotland Incident Reporting & Investigation Centre (IRIC) Conference on ‘Medical Devices and Equipment Safety’ was held earlier this year at the Golden Jubilee Conference Hotel in Glasgow. The event was organised by the Scottish Health Service Centre and Health Facilities Scotland (HFS) – both parts of NHS National Services Scotland – and was attended by 150 delegates and sponsored by 18 exhibitors. The delegates came from a wide range of professional backgrounds, and included clinical, health and safety, occupational health, estates management, medical physics, equipment management, decontamination, nursing, and risk and quality management professionals, and research and innovation personnel from the higher education and the independent sectors. 

The conference was run back-to-back with HFS’s Decontamination seminar, which was more focused on decontamination of medical devices. The conference’s objectives were to explore the future of incident reporting and safety alerts at national level, to examine a range of current issues affecting medical devices management in Scotland, to share a local authority perspective on health and social care integration, to explore how clinicians and technologists can improve safety by working more closely with IRIC, and to scope out ‘cyber risks’ and threats in a sector where the use of connected devices is rapidly increasing.