ECRI

December, 1994

ECRI

ECRI is widely recognized as the world's leading independent organization committed to the assessment, evaluation, and continued improvement of healthcare technology. A nonprofit, health research agency chartered in 1955, ECRI provides a broad variety of services in support of better patient care to thousands of hospitals and other health-related organizations and agencies throughout the world. Our health services research, publications, databases, and technical assistance programs are the benchmark of the healthcare community.

ECRI is dedicated to improving the safety, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness of health technology, broadly defined to encompass devices, drugs, procedures, facilities, and related standards and guidelines. The results of our research and experience are made available through our publications, information systems, seminars, and technical assistance and management programs. We meet the needs of the healthcare community and its patients through the interdisciplinary application of analytical, clinical, basic biomedical, engineering, information, physical, and social sciences.

More than 25 years' experience and a staff of experts recognized in their individual fields enable ECRI to provide a depth and scope of service unmatched by any other organization. Strictly enforced conflict-of-interest guidelines guarantee an unbiased approach to all projects. We have carefully developed an environment and working conditions that encourage maximum objectivity, productivity, and integrity of process. Neither ECRI nor any of its staff has a financial interest in the sale of any medical technology. ECRI and its staff accept no royalties, gifts, finder's fees, or commissions from the medical device or pharmaceutical industries and are not permitted to own stock or undertake consulting work for such industries.

ECRI's research, publications, and services span healthcare technology, facilities planning, risk management, environmental management, and quality of care. For nearly three decades, we have published the results of our own intensive medical device evaluation and testing programs. Our Health Technology Assessment Information Service provides comprehensive, up-to-the-minute, objective evaluations of drugs, devices, and procedures. It is supported by our unique International Health Technology Assessment Database.

ECRI is the world's most comprehensive source of data and judgment on medical devices and equipment. In conjunction with our Health Devices System, Healthcare Product Comparison System, and SELECT~ Program, we have amassed comprehensive databases on over 5,000 categories of devices. Our Healthcare Standards Directory is compiled from a database containing more than 24,000 clinical practice standards and guidelines. Other databases contain more than 300,000 reports of medical device evaluations, problems and hazards, cost studies, and technology assessments from worldwide sources. Databases employing thousands of sources are updated daily and also draw on our International Problem Reporting and User Experience Networks; our extensive technology assessment, technical assistance, and product testing programs; and our accident and forensic investigation group. Additional information comes from laboratories, hospitals, and government agencies around the world.

ECRI is a Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization (WHO). We have carried out technical assistance projects in Western Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Arctic, and the Pacific, as well as throughout North and South America.

For more information on ECRI's publications, services, and databases, please contact Michele Carlin, Director of Communications and Circulation, at ECRI, 5200 Butler Pike, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462, U.S.A.; telephone (610) 825-6000, ext. 125; fax (610) 834-1275; or e-mail: ecri@hslc.org.

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