U.S. Standardization Community Gathers in Celebration of World Standards Day 2017

Co-Chaired by ANSI and NIST with AAMI as Administrating Organization, Event Highlights Standardization's Role in Smart Health Innovation

To highlight the key role that standardization plays in advancing intelligent healthcare systems, more than 250 members of the broader U.S. standardization community gathered last night for the 2017 U.S. Celebration of World Standards Day at an exhibition and gala dinner at the Mandarin Oriental in Washington, D.C. The event is co-chaired each year by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) served as the 2017 administrating organization, and the gala event included the ceremonial passing of the baton from AAMI to the 2018 administrating organization, ANSI.

A gallery of photos from the U.S. event is available here.

The evening's proceedings included presentation of the 2017 Ronald H. Brown Standards Leadership Award to Charles Sidebottom, P.E., managing partner of PPO Standards LLC. Mr. Sidebottom was recognized for his extensive contributions to the international standards community for more than 30 years. As an active participant and influencer in the medical device and healthcare standards arena, Mr. Sidebottom serves as secretary to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Subcommittee (SC) 62A, Common Aspects of Electrical Equipment Used in Medical Practice. He has also had various positions in a number of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committees (TC)s related to medical equipment. Additionally, he has served on ANSI's appeals board and is a former board member of ASTM International. He is a longtime member of SES-the Society for Standards Professionals and also serves as the producer vice-chair of ASTM International Committee F04 on Medical and Surgical Materials and Devices.

The 2017 World Standards Day Paper Competition winners were also announced, by the president of SES - The Society for Standards Professionals, Ed Mikoski. Paul W. Witherell, Sudarsan Rachuri, and Anantha Narayanan were recognized for their paper entitled "The FACTS of Information Systems: An Informatic Approach to Standards."

The 2017 World Standards Day theme, "Smart Health: Using Intelligent Systems to Improve the Quality and Delivery of Healthcare in a More Integrated, Focused Approach," reflects the realities of the modern age of healthcare and the needs for the future of patients and caregivers. Intelligent healthcare systems provide a distributed environment that requires a purposeful precision and a level of reliability and availability to maintain their effectiveness. Standards play a large part in supporting these systems to improve the quality and delivery of healthcare for a more integrated, focused approach.

"World Standards Day celebrations like ours take place all over the world, but I would guess that ours is unique in the level of cooperation involved," said Joe Bhatia, ANSI president and CEO. "And, particularly in highly innovative and inter-dependent technology areas like smart health, the strongest solutions emerge through the broadest collaboration and cooperation."

World Standards Day was initially launched in 1970, and is now celebrated by nations around the globe. U.S. activities are organized annually by a planning committee consisting of representatives from the standards and conformity assessment community.

For more information, visit www.wsd-us.org.