Patient Safety Advocate Nominees

MTM subscribers nominated 33 individuals, teams or organizations from around the world as Patient Safety Advocates.

For our first edition of 2019 we asked our subscribers to nominate patient safety advocates they felt had contributed to increased patient safety and better patient outcomes. They could specify an individual, team, or organization. We were gratified by the response but lacked contact information for some of those nominated, or in some instances, those nominated had already been featured in one of our Change Agent issues. The responses were from around the world but due to the time pressure and the holiday season some of the nominations will be featured in upcoming editions, in our Newsletter or in our digital edition.

From left to right: Robert Amyot, President, CAE Healthcare; Joe Kiani, CEO of Masimo and founder of the Patient Safety Movement Foundation and Tore Laerdal, Chairman and CEO of Laerdal Medical.

We are featuring nine of the nominees whosepictures appear on the cover and they describe their approaches andcontributions and share their information in this edition.

Three of the nominees already featured wereRobert Amyot, President, CAE Healthcare, Joe Kiani, CEO of Masimo and founderof the Patient Safety Movement Foundation and Tore Laerdal, MSc. Chairman andCEO of Laerdal Medical, executive Chairman of Laerdal Global Health andexecutive director of Laerdal Foundation.

Dr. Robert Amyot, President of CAEHealthcare, was inducted into the National Center for Simulation Hall of Famein 2015, recognized for his contribution to healthcare simulation. Throughouthis career, Dr. Amyot has relentlessly pursued a vision of safer healthcarethrough simulation.

A native of Montreal, Dr. Amyot obtainedhis medical degree from the University of Montreal and is certified by theRoyal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the American Board ofInternal Medicine. Dr. Amyot is a practitioner, researcher and was associate professorof medicine at the University of Montreal, where he taught clinical cardiologyand echocardiography. He partnered to develop the virtual reality Vimedixultrasound simulator and obtained a patent for its technology.

Following several years as an entrepreneur,Dr. Amyot sold his company to CAE Healthcare where he became Chief MedicalOfficer, and President. Today, he is promoting simulation‐based trainingstandards and ongoing competency assessment for clinicians with medicalsocieties and associations. CAE Healthcare offers cutting edge learning toolsto healthcare students and professionals, allowing practical experience throughrisk-free simulation training.

Joe Kiani, founder, chairman & CEO,Masimo, is a global medical technology innovator. Joe has been a beacon forpatient safety and innovation in healthcare for more than 25 years. Convincedthat the use of adaptive signal processing could solve the problems of motionartifact and noise that plagued pulse oximetry - widely recognized as the fifthvital sign - he founded Masimo in 1989 to improve patient outcome and reducethe cost of care by taking non-invasive monitoring to new sites andapplications. Mr. Kiani founded the Patient Safety Movement Foundation in 2012and the World Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit.

The Patient Safety Movement Foundation(PSMF) has the goal of eliminating preventable deaths by 2020 in the US, and tosignificantly reduce preventable deaths in hospitals worldwide. Under Mr.Kiani’s leadership, the Patient Safety Movement Foundation has been able to getover 100 companies to make the pledge to share their data with whoever can useit to make patients safer. Patient Safety Movement is expecting the datasharing pledges will help create a new ecosystem of predictive algorithms,tapping into the individual patient data superhighway, to help clinicians savemore lives. In addition, over a dozen Actionable Patient Safety Solutions havebeen created to help hospitals implement processes to avoid human errors becomingfatal to patients.

Tore Lærdal was conferred as a Knight ofthe First Class Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for his many years ofhumanitarian service. This royal honour was bestowed in recognition of hisefforts to reduce maternal and newborn mortality in low resource countries. Inrecent years he has focused on helping reduce maternal and newborn mortality byproviding mothers and babies through the Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) project.He received the Neonatal Pioneer Award for his contributions to the health andwell being of newborns and infants and in 2017 Tore received the first EuropeanEMS Award for his personal and exceptional dedication and commitment to savelives and to improve emergency care by supporting a scientific approach to care,by developing education and by supporting implementation internationally,including the EMS Leadership Network. Tore Laerdal continues the traditionsupporting the international Utstein meetings and recently he was a key figurein establishing the Global Resuscitation Alliance.

Laerdal Medical is the globally leading supplier of patient simulators and an alliance partner with the National League of Nursing to improve patient care and safety. Laerdal Global Health has partnered with USAID, NIH, Save the Children, the American Academy of Pediatrics and others in the Helping Babies Breathe alliance and the Survive & Thrive alliance.

Originally published in  Issue 1, 2019 of MT Magazine.