Written by Lawton R. Burns and a panel of expert contributors, from the prestigious Wharton School, The Health Care Value Chain analyzes the key developments and future trends in the United States' health care supply chain. Based on a groundbreaking research initiative underwritten by the industry/university consortium-- the Center for Health Management Research-- this important book offers an in-depth examination of how the health care supply chain helps create value and competitive advantage. The Health Care Value Chain offers a thorough examination of the trading relationships among the manufacturers of health care products, the distributors, the group purchasing organizations, and the hospital customers and end users of those products. And the authors show how health care professionals and manufacturers can work together to form beneficial strategic alliances.

The term 'medical devices' covers a wide range of equipment essential for patient care at every level of the health service, whether at the bedside, at a health clinic or in a large specialised hospital. Yet many countries lack access to high-quality devices, particularly in developing countries where health technology assessments are rare and there is a lack of regulatory controls to prevent the use of substandard devices. This publication provides a guidance framework for countries wishing to create or modify their own regulatory systems for medical devices, based on best practice experience in other countries. Issues highlighted include: the need for harmonised regulations; and the adoption, where appropriate, of device approvals of advanced regulatory systems to avoid an unnecessary drain on scarce resources. These approaches allow emphasis to be placed on locally-assessed needs, including vendor and device registration, training and surveillance and information exchange systems.

This updated sterilisation manual informs health workers about the simple protocols and procedures that have been developed to prevent hospital-acquired infections both inside and outside the sterilisation plant. The guidelines included in this manual show the steps to follow in cleaning, preparing, sterilizing, storing and transporting hospital equipment so as to obtain sterile material. It is very important to be aware of this information in order to provide patients with safe health care.

Provides guidance to help health planners, estates and facilities managers, sterile services managers and capital planning and design teams to plan and design a sterile services department. It discusses the objectives of a sterile services department (SSD) and service requirements, particularly focusing on: raising standards in decontamination services by optimising the built environment: service requirements strategy: calculating the optimum capacity of an SSD to eradicate bottlenecks: determining the most appropriate location of an SSD. Design guidance based on the above service objectives is outlined. Finally, the finer details of the individual spaces within an SSD are discussed.