Global Clinical Engineering Status: Post-COVID19 Review

Many colleagues have written about the global reliance on health technologies whose innovation, deployment and supportcontinue to improve worldwide healthcare and its delivery. The World Health Organization’s-WHO 2007 Resolution WHA60.29called for the effective use of health technologies (HT), in particular medical devices, through proper planning, assessment,acquisition and management.The community of professional clinical engineering (CE) practitioners’ pre-COVID19 stories are captured in the Global ClinicalEngineering Journal. An article from 2022 shows the reasons for the increased contributions of this community especially duringthe pandemic in The Growing Role of Clinical Engineering: Merging Technology at the Point of Care.This article will answer questions such as to how this global reliance was demonstrated during the COVID19 period. How thestatus of the Clinical/Biomedical Engineering (CE/BME) profession that serves at the point of care changed as the world emergesfrom the huge stresses of the pandemic. The article reviews the evolution of the CE profession since 2020, how it partneredwith WHO between 2020-2022 and what lessons were learned in the process. It reports future CE priorities to improve country,regional, and global practice in 2023 and beyond. This timely preliminary report shares important findings related to patientcare support services.