China should enhance the training and regulation for clinical engineers, the expertise and quantity of whom both lag behind developed countries, experts told the Forum for Asian Clinical Engineering in Shanghai.
Clinical engineer is a profession responsible primarily for medical equipment management, renovation and development, staff training on new equipment and medical accident investigation in order to optimize healthcare delivery and ensure medical equipment safety and efficiency.
In developed countries like the United States and Japan, all clinical engineers must pass examination and work with special license.
There is no such special job as clinical engineer in China and local universities have also just started academic training in this field. And guidelines are also absent.
Ji Guang, vice president of Shanghai Traditional Chinese Medicine University, said the development of TCM needs clinical engineers, who can improve and regulate TCM equipment based on medical, information technology, electric mechanism and biomedicine to boost TCM development.
"Our university has launched such major while we are calling for the government to recognize the urgency and regulate this profession for further development," he said.
