The United States Navy has enlisted the ECRI Institute to help advise its procurement, use, and maintenance of medical equipment at all Naval hospitals worldwide.

The ECRI Institute, an independent nonprofit dedicated to improving patient care by using applied scientific research to optimize the safety and efficacy of medical procedures, devices, drugs, and processes, will offer the Navy access to its Health Devices Gold service, which provides information resources guiding the selection and implementation of healthcare technologies.

This announcement signals an expansion of the United States Armed Forces’ current relationship with ECRI. For more than 25 years, the US Air Force has consulted with the institute, availing itself of membership programs such as Health Devices System (which evaluates and compares a wide range of medical technologies) at more than 80 Air Force facilities across the globe.

Navy officials say that, in a world where medical technology is fast evolving, the ECRI partnership is important to help ensure the best care and safety of patients in the Navy's far-flung network of hospitals and clinics.

"Navy Medicine has 19 different Military Medicine Commands," says Jason Jones, HM 1 (FMF), U.S. Naval Medical Logistics Command. "Our new Health Devices Gold membership will be a resource for each of these medical commands and will be used on a daily basis to help complete their missions. The new ECRI Institute membership also provides the Navy an important new partner in helping to address today’s challenging medical technology issues."

"The U.S. Navy is taking a leadership role in its commitment to making medical technology management and patient safety a priority," adds James P. Keller, Jr., the ECRI Institute’s vice president of health technology evaluation and safety. "We're looking forward to helping its hospitals make better procurement decisions and identify medical products that might be putting members of our armed forces at risk."