Learn how to to review clinical research with a critical eye and also find out more about my habit of drinking too much soda.

Continuation of the determination and validating of "real science", we now take a deeper dive into clinical research methodologies.

Last episode we covered gold standard comparisons of measurements devices. Now lets talk about gold standard comparisons of screening devices. We will touch on the ever-confusion terms of sensitivity and specificity through an illustration about... what else... fishing!

To properly assess clinical technology it is often required to evaluate the technology against a know gold standard. This must be done in a thoughtful and systematic way. This episode touches on gold standard comparisons of measurement devices and briefly introduces concepts in validate you data and draw proper conclusions.

When evaluating or assessing healthcare technology you have to first validate that the science behind the technology is "real". Does it solve a real clinical problem? Is it based on real scientific principles?

Having a comprehensive life cycle plan for your healthcare technology is a good start. But you also need a systematic process to implement that plan and guide your decisions. New investments and growth are important but don't forget about your routine replacements before its too late. You need to have method to this madness we call life cycle planning.

Support, maintenance, and utilizations of healthcare technology is only part of the overall HTM financial picture. The overall life cycle plan takes into consideration to ongoing expenses of you technology as well as the potential impact of future capital purchases. We can't just look at individual equipment decisions. We have to look at the full picture as these financial decisions are competing for the same pot of gold.

Stop me if you've heard this one... Three physicians walk into a board room...

Contract terms can get complicated and messy. Many of us have not gone through law school so we rely on those with legal training to ponder the language but we still have a responsibility to understand enough to assure the contract language reflects our intended deliverables and supports our current and future service strategies.

Contracts are governing documents that not only define service strategies, organizational liabilities, response guarantees, but are also the source document for many of the financial and business arrangements in HTM. This episode gets you started and the next episode picks up from there.