Research opportunities and needs in the management of medical technology (MMT)

This paper suggests a number of issues in the new field of MMT, which require systematic research to: a) help improve our understanding of the process, and b) provide help to managers of this process. This emerging field cuts across other disciplines, such as medicine, hospital administration, sociology, management, and engineering. Therefore, a cross-disciplinary approach is needed to provide an adequate research base for these two purposes. A number of methods or tools for conducting both academic and applied research are discussed, as well as some significant issues in MMT and potentially researchable questions related to them. The issues include what functions and activities are properly included in MMT, how to organise MMT, quality assurance in MMT, the general economics of medical technology, how proactive vs. reactive can MMT be in the organisation, who "owns" the technology, and what the role is of information technology (IT) in MMT.