Clinical engineering units and their role in the organizational structure of the healthcare system.

The most important characteristics of the healthcare system as a public institution is its comprehensive efficiency. At the current stage of development of biomedical science and technology, the most important factor in ensuring such efficiency is ensuring the institutional adaptability of this system to the currently observed change in the technical and technological landscape in the biomedical sphere. Purpose of the study is to formalize the role, functions and configuration of clinical engineering units in the organizational structure of the healthcare system. Material and methods. The structure of clinical engineering units presented in this article based on twelve years of experience in interacting with medical institutions in the Volgograd region. The methods of systematic, comparative and qualitative analysis of the technical and technological base of healthcare institutions, features of their information and management structure, economic analysis and analysis of the clinical environment were used. Results. This paper presents a description of the role and functions of the system of clinical engineering units as one of the key elements in ensuring a high level of institutional adaptability of the healthcare system to modern challenges. This description includes a description of the personnel base of clinical engineering units, their functions and the relationships between clinical engineering units and other structural units of the healthcare system determined by these functions. Also presented a description of the organizational structure of clinical engineering units. It shown that at the external level, the implementation of the proposed institutional innovations would improve the efficiency of inter-institutional communication between the healthcare system and the production and distribution systems of biomedical equipment and technologies. At the internal level, the consequence of these innovations will be an increase in the efficiency of life cycle management of biomedical equipment and technologies and an increase in the efficiency of healthcare institutions by improving the quality of analysis of the features of the technical and technological basis of these institutions as integral high-tech production complexes, i. e. an increase in the quality of intra-institutional communication. Findings. The existence of a problem of insufficient institutional adaptability of the healthcare system to modern challenges in the form of explosive progress in biomedical equipment and technologies, in particular, artificial intelligence systems, shown, which affects the overall performance indicators of the healthcare system as a public institution. Proposed a method for solving this problem by introducing of clinical engineering units into the institutional structure of healthcare institutions.