About the "Considerations for Challenging Environments" Feature in Our Evaluations

ECRI has expanded its medical product Evaluation program to cover the globe. The organization has broadened the reach of its highly respected Evaluations to also include products marketed and used solely outside of the United States. Much of the testing of these products is being carried out at the ECRI International Research Centre in Selangor, Malaysia, as well as in various other locations across Europe and Asia.

As part of this expansion, our Evaluations include a feature called "Considerations for Challenging Environments." Its goal is to address the fact that facilities in different environments around the world may require very different capabilities and tolerances from the products they buy: What a well-funded metropolitan research hospital needs, for example, can differ drastically from the needs of a small rural hospital with limited resources. Regulatory constraints, physical conditions, and the availability of replacement parts are among the many factors that can vary widely throughout the world.

Our "Considerations for Challenging Environments" feature looks at the challenges each product could face in the environments in which it will be used, and how well it's likely to meet those challenges. The main conduit for this information is a table that appears in our Evaluations. Here's an example,...