Malcolm Ridgway, Ph.D., CCE

Dr. Ridgway is nominated for excellence in innovation, for influencing the direction that clinical engineering has taken over the decades, and for his impact on CE professionals, clinical users, regulatory authorities, patients and society in general with his fight for rational, evidence-based maintenance.

Here is a glimpse at some of the supporting material for his nomination.

Malcolm Ridgway is widely acknowledged to be one of the pioneers of applying engineering and managerial skills to supporting and advancing patient care through technology. Although he spent almost six years in the aerospace industry working on both the manned and the unmanned space programs, he has devoted most of his more than five decades of professional life to clinical engineering (CE).

Along with Dr. Joel Nobel and a few others, Dr. Ridgway started one of the first CE shared service programs in the US, dedicated to providing medical equipment maintenance and maintenance management services to hospitals. At that time, in the early 1970s, CE was just emerging at a few of the major academic hospitals, and most community hospitals had to rely on the equipment manufacturers for service. Unlike other shared services that remained as not‐for-profit organizations or were subsequently dismantled, the Hospital Council of Southern California’s shared service under Dr. Ridgway’s leadership grew from a $2 million/year not-for‐profit organization into an $80 million/year for‐profit nationwide enterprise (COHR Inc.), substantially expanding the role of independent service organizations (ISOs) in CE.

During his 37 years at COHR dba MasterPlan, Dr. Ridgway had several leading roles and was widely recognized as the company’s visionary in terms of maintenance strategy, service quality, and regulatory compliance. After MasterPlan was acquired and merged with Aramark in March 2011, he continued to serve as the merged company’s Chief Clinical Engineer for two more years.