Welcome to the 6th Combined Annual Conference 2010
On behalf of the Organising Committee of the 6th Combined Annual Conference for Healthcare Materials Management, Medical Technology Association of New Zealand and Product Evaluation Health New Zealand, I would like to extend a very warm welcome to this year’s conference in Auckland.

The Ministerial Review conducted in July 2009 made 170 recommendations to the Minister of Health. The recommendations were based around one central theme – ensuring that New Zealanders continue to be well served by a world class health and disability system. 

Bringing together the hospital procurement teams and the suppliers of medical technology at a combined conference, gives us an opportunity to present and discuss options to improve the supply chain and identify cost efficiencies for procurement. In this way, we can all play our part to ensure the continued supply of innovative medical technology that will contribute to improving patient outcomes.

The theme of the conference “CHANGE – Rising to the Challenge” reflects the environment that we are working in and therefore, your participation at the conference is vital for success.

I look forward to welcoming you to the Combined Conference in July.

Kind Regards
Faye Sumner, Convenor
On behalf of the Organising Committee

Welcome to all HMM, MTANZ and PEHNZ attendees to Conference 2010.

PEHNZ is a group of health professionals with an active role in product review and evaluation. As a member of our group it is necessary to have a clinical background and a professional qualification in the health field.

We all take an active part in reviewing both equipment and consumables in the environment they are to be used, with the ultimate view of making the patient journey as safe as possible and keeping all staff using or coming in contact with the equipment, as safe as possible.

Evaluating and trialling clinical equipment is indeed an arduous process. It takes all who participate, on a journey which teaches everyone so many new things, that indeed after the process is complete we look back in wonder as to how far we have come during the process. It’s easy then to see how high the mountain was, but at the outset it just looked like a blip on the horizon.

It has also taught many of us how wide the multidisciplinary team has to be to ensure the best and right decision is made; this could almost be likened to setting up base camp, its low on the mountain but still tricky to get there.

As a group now, we must take this time to enjoy each others company, learn and network, so when we next head off to scale our next mountain, we might have a better idea how high we need to plan to climb.

I hope you all enjoy the programme offered.

Maria Strachan, President PEHNZ