Mr Eric Woo is Regional Director of ECRI Institute, Asia Pacific office. He is responsible for the development and operations of ECRI Institute in this region.

Mr Woo brings with him 21 years of experience in the healthcare industry, from the building of various businesses for medical technology organisations in Asia Pacific, to managing a private hospital, and research involvement in Stem Cells therapy for regenerative medicine.

His extensive knowledge and experience in healthcare management has paved the way for the notable successes in his career, such as the improvement of operational workflow in a hospital, introduction of new technology in the Asian healthcare market, and the utilisation of evidence-based approaches in improving methodology for technology adoption.

In recent years, he has conducted trainings and presentations relating to medical device accident investigations, particularly on health IT, healthcare risk management, patient safety concerns and technology management to a range of audience, including healthcare authorities and regulators, hospitals, associations and conferences in the Asia Pacific region.

Presentation Synopsis
Role of Health Technology Assessment in Future Proofing Healthcare
Healthcare technology, the driving force towards better and safer patient care, cannot be expected to diffuse organically in a hospital. The nature of technology, which consistently evolves, requires close attention – from assessment, acquisition to management. Instead of a reactive approach, healthcare organisations need to proactively identify, forecast, monitor, and analyse new and existing technologies in order to understand the impact on clinical care, patient outcomes and costs. Through forecasting the impact of technologies in multiple domains, hospitals will not only be able to predict potential outcomes, but also streamline risk management efforts at an enterprise level.

This presentation dives deeper into the concept of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) as a systematic analysis of the evidence for safety, efficacy, effectiveness, costs, cost effectiveness, and the ethical and legal implications of healthcare technologies. Various stakeholders need to play a more active role in HTA to control costs in a scarce-resource environment and make informed purchasing decisions using evidence-based approaches. While challenges remain in determining the effectiveness of new and emerging technologies, important decisions need to be made for the patient. The implications of inappropriate technology, excess or unnecessary technology, escalating costs and ultimately unintended patient harm, pose huge predicaments in enterprise risk management.

Key trends in HTA need to be recognised to understand the future direction of its applicability and relevance. From being aware of the impact of patient-centred outcomes and comparative clinical effectiveness research, the use of electronic clinical data “big data”, and arriving at personalised medicine after addressing the challenges of genetic tests, these trends may change the way healthcare is delivered as we now know it. Beyond all this lies the need to identify the potential risk of technology adoption or rejection, and its ripple effect throughout the healthcare enterprise.

 Presentation Synopsis
Closing the Knowing: Diving Deeper in Safety
Healthcare today is highly complex. Care is often delivered in a pressurised and fast-moving environment, involving a vast array of technology, and many individual decisions and judgments by healthcare staff on a daily basis. Under such circumstances, there is a chance that things can, and do go wrong. As a result, unintentional harm sometimes befalls a patient during a clinical procedure, or as a result of a clinical decision. Errors in the process of care can, and has also resulted in injuries, which may sometimes be serious enough to cause death.

Inherent safety in providing healthcare is further challenged by the risk opportunity of technology adoption. The complexity of providing care requires a critical review of impact particularly from the people, process and technology perspectives.

In this closing, we shall review some of these impact and framework, diving deeper into the understanding of safety implementation.