AAMI: KILMER Conference 2022 Promises a Bright Future for Sterility Assurance

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

AAMI

KILMER Conference 2022 Promises a Bright Future for Sterility Assurance

The 11th KILMER Conference, hosted by Johnson & Johnson in Athens, Greece, brought together more than 300 microbiological quality and sterility assurance professionals from industry, academia, government agencies, notified bodies and healthcare delivery organizations around the world.

The KILMER Conference has historically served to exchange ideas with the brightest minds in sterility assurance and as a network to share best practices. In the last few years, the conference has prompted conversations about the need to connect the dots for sterility assurance from end-to-end in the product life cycle and the importance of collaborating to innovate. This year, the theme for this global forum was “CONTINUITY: Fostering our Future.”

In describing the importance of this year’s theme, Joyce Hansen, vice president of sterility assurance for Johnson & Johnson and KILMER Conference Chair highlighted that, “to continue fostering the solutions that will help us solve our sterilization challenges and minimize risk to patients, it is imperative to sustain what is working well, and that we embrace change and support the industry’s growth while making sure that we develop our talent for the future.”

AAMI and PDA Take the Wheel

In spirit of the continuity theme, AAMI President and CEO Pamela Arora and Glenn Wright, COO and president-elect of the Parenteral Drug Association (PDA), spoke about leveraging their respective association’s resources as leading neutral conveners to host future KILMER conferences.

“As a long-time supporter of the conference and the home of the KILMER scholarship and grant program, AAMI and the AAMI Foundation remain committed to supporting this high-level, high-impact work,” Arora said.

Of note, she discussed the widening scope of AAMI’s standards development work in the sterilization field and the influence which ideas sparked at the KILMER conference and led by KILMER groups has on this important work. Wright highlighted PDA’s historied involvement with the conference, and how AAMI and PDA are ideally positioned with their differing focus areas to host future conferences.

Wright commented, “I can’t stress enough how strongly PDA feels regarding the importance of the KILMER Conference to the industry and the unique nature of its design and content. PDA, with its 76 years of service to the industry, has and remains a longtime supporter of the KILMER Conference and the KILMER Collaboration groups. It was great to be at the conference in Athens and see so many of my PDA colleagues in attendance. I was especially honored to be present as Maik Jornitz, a very active PDA member and past chairman of the PDA board of directors, was recognized with the KILMER Award.”

“We are very much looking forward to working with AAMI to continue this important conference. I can’t think of a better collaboration partner,” he said, “Like PDA, it is a leader in its focus areas and, like PDA, provides its members and the overall industry enormous value.”

AMA Elects AAMI AI Thought Leader Jesse Ehrenfeld to Top Spot

At its 2022 annual meeting, the American Medical Association (AMA) voted Jesse Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH, – anesthesiologist, senior associate dean at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and co-chair of AAMI’s AI Standards Committee – as president-elect of the organization. After a year as president-elect, he will serve as president of the AMA.

“I’m honored to have been chosen by my physician colleagues across the country to step into this role,” he said. “It’s an exciting time to be a leader in medicine. It’s a challenging time to be a leader in medicine.”

As president, Ehrenfeld plans to continue his focus on health equity – he has advocated on behalf of LGBTQ individuals for over 20 years – and digital health. He is also deeply committed to advancing the AMA’s goals around the Recovery Plan for America’s Physicians, an initiative that includes reducing physician burnout, reforming prior authorization and Medicare pay, promoting physician-led care and supporting telehealth usage.

“It was the AMA’s urging that led to CMS temporarily removing restrictions on where patients could receive telehealth services under Medicare,” he said. “We are continuing to push Congress and HHS to make those changes permanent. We think doctors should be licensed in the state where the patient is located, but there are exceptions. If I’m in Minneapolis on vacation and I need to call my doctor back home in Wisconsin, that should be a reasonable exception. We look forward to continuing to work with Congress to support adoption of telehealth and to ensure that there’s appropriate coverage and payment for telehealth services.”

Ehrenfeld’s appointment to AMA’s top slot comes after eight years serving on the organization’s board of trustees, 16 in the house of delegates, and seven years on the LGBTQ advisory committee, among several other roles. Numerous professional organizations, committee service, awards and editorial activities are listed in his CV.

Adding to his multiple clinical, academic and leadership roles, Ehrenfeld co-chairs AAMI’s Artificial Intelligence Standards Committee, bringing important perspective around medical device development and quality management.

“For digital innovations to work effectively in a clinical setting, they have to be evidence based, validated, actionable and connected,” he said. “To do that, you have to have physician input and expertise throughout the development and design cycles.”