Larry Fennigkoh, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus | Milwaukee School of Engineering
Milwaukee, WI, UNITED STATES
Dr. Larry Fenningkoh's areas of expertise include forensic engineering, control of medical error and medical instrumentation design.
Education, Licensure and Certification (6)
Registered Professional Engineer: Wisconsin
Certified Clinical Engineer: ICC (#219)
Ph.D.: Industrial Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 1995
M.S.: Engineering Management, Milwaukee School of Engineering 1986
B.S.: Electrical Engineering Technology, Milwaukee School of Engineering 1974
A.A.S.: Electronic Communications, Milwaukee School of Engineering 1974
Biography
Dr. Larry Fennigkoh is a Professor Emeritus in the Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering department and has been a faculty member at MSOE since 1983. He specializes in forensic engineering, control of medical error, medical device-related injuries and deaths, and human factors in medical instrumentation design.
Previously, Fennigkoh served as the director of clinical engineering at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee. He also developed an algorithm to help hospitals determine how much and how often medical devices need to be inspected for maintenance. The algorithm was adopted by the federal regulatory agency and is still used today by hospitals around the world. In addition, Fennigkoh continues to do forensic engineering consulting work on medical device-related patient injuries and deaths—cases which he is often able to tie back to his classroom lectures.
Areas of Expertise (4)
Biomedical Engineering
Medical Devices
Clinical Engineering
Medical Imaging
Accomplishments (8)
Inducted, Fellow, American College of Clinical Engineering
2018
Inducted, Hall of Fame, American College of Clinical Engineering
2017
Karl O. Werwath Engineering Research Award, MSOE
2009
Inducted, College of Fellows, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
2009
American College of Clinical Engineering Patient Safety Advocacy Award
2006
UWM Outstanding Alumni Award
2003
AAMI Clinical Engineering Achievement Award
1994
MSOE Outstanding Alumni Award
1989
Affiliations (15)
- Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE) / Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society : Member
- Milwaukee Section IEEE EMBS : Chairman
- IEEE Milwaukee Section : Director
- Journal of Ergonomics : Editorial Board
- IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Standards Committee : National Chairman
- Accreditation Board of Engineering & Technology : Evaluator
- Clinical Engineering Board of Examiners, Intl. Certification Commission : Member
- Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) : Member
- American College of Clinical Engineering (ACEE) : Treasurer & Founding Member
- American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) : Member
- Healthcare Technology Certification Commission (CMBES) : Board Member
- International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation & Learning (INACSL) : Member
- American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) : Fellow
- Healthcare Technology Foundation (HTF) : Board Member
- Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Society (UHMS) : Member
Media Appearances (1)
A call for vigilance against device-related accidents at CEAI
DOTmed
2016-08-25
Dr. Larry Fennigkoh, professor of biomedical engineering at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, detailed a number of medical device-related incidents as examples of the intersection between human and technical factors that generally combine to result in these catastrophes. Fennigkoh, a veteran of health care forensics engineering, exhorted all those who are involved in the design, use, management and maintenance of medical devices to recognize their obligation to learn from such cases. He said any assessment of such tragedies has to be based on intricate understanding of both human and technological elements.
Patents (1)
Method and apparatus for providing records of events during a cardiac arrest
US-4457312-A
1984 To provide accurate reconstructable records of the events and therapy administered during a cardiac arrest, flow sheets are attached to the top of a timing clipboard. Each row of the flow sheet matrix indicates a different event and the columns indicate the time of events. The clipboard illuminates columns at intervals in the range of fifteen seconds to five minutes in a timed sequence across the flow sheet by energizing electroluminescent trips underneath the flow sheet to permit the nurse to indicate the events in the column corresponding to the time of the event. Other sensed data is recorded on a tape with timing signals for later reconstruction. When all of the columns have been covered, an alarm is sounded so that a new flow sheet may be attached. The page of the flow sheet is indicated on the clipboard for translation onto the flow sheet.
Research Grants (3)
Faculty Development Grant
MSOE
2014 Design and development of a pneumo / hemothorax simulator for chest tube drainage training with patient simulation manikins.
Physics and biomechanics of golf putting
Grant
2006 – 2009
No. 81028
National Science Foundation
1999-2001 Co-principal investigator – Undergraduate design projects to aid persons with disabilities.
Selected Publications (5)
Data mining CMMSs: How to convert data into knowledge
Biomedical Instrumentation & TechnologyFennigkoh, L., Nanney, D.C.
2018 Although the healthcare technology management (HTM) community has decades of accumulated medical device-related maintenance data, little knowledge has been gleaned from these data. Finding and extracting such knowledge requires the use of the well-established, but admittedly somewhat foreign to HTM, application of inferential statistics. This article sought to provide a basic background on inferential statistics and describe a case study of their application, limitations, and proper interpretation. The research question associated with this case study involved examining the effects of ventilator preventive maintenance (PM) labor hours, age, and manufacturer on needed unscheduled corrective maintenance (CM) labor hours. The study sample included more than 21,000 combined PM inspections and CM work orders on 2,045 ventilators from 26 manufacturers during a five-year period (2012-16). A multiple regression analysis revealed that device age, manufacturer, and accumulated PM inspection labor hours all influenced the amount of CM labor significantly (P < 0.001). In essence, CM labor hours increased with increasing PM labor. However, and despite the statistical significance of these predictors, the regression analysis also indicated that ventilator age, manufacturer, and PM labor hours only explained approximately 16% of all variability in CM labor, with the remainder (84%) caused by other factors that were not included in the study. As such, the regression model obtained here is not suitable for predicting ventilator CM labor hours.
A New, Multi-function defibrillator electrode: Design and Test Results
Technical ReportFennigkoh, L., Macur, R.
2017 A novel silver-silver chloride, multi-function defibrillator electrode has been developed that significantly meets or exceeds the current standards for such electrodes as defined within IEC 60601-2-4 (2010). The design of such electrodes allows them to be used for external defibrillation, ECG monitoring, cardioversion, and extended external cardiac pacing. The innovative fabrication techniques used with the prototype electrodes described here produce extremely low gel-to-gel impedances in response to both small and large, defibrillator-produced, test currents. DC offset potentials are also particularly low and rapidly recover following the delivery of defibrillation shocks. Equally and especially impressive are the preservation of such performance measures even after extended periods (60 minutes) of external pacing. An additionally novel and accompanying, patent-pending, technique has also been developed that visually verifies a uniform current density is maintained over the electrode's active surface.
A Comparison of Defibrillator Waveform Characteristics
Research PaperFennigkoh, L.
2015 This is a brief study comparing biphasic defibrillator waveform characteristics across three different devices and three different resistive loads.
Fabrication of a nursing manikin overlay for simulation of chest drainage management
Conference PaperTorregrosa, T., Fennigkoh, L., Weston, J.
2015 Medical manikins are a type of patient simulator used to train medical staff. The benefits of using a medical manikin simulator include the suspension of disbelief, simultaneous team and individual learning, allowable failure, personalized scenarios, frequent repetition and a focus on the needs of the learner rather than the patient. Unfortunately, one of the limitations of medical manikins is that they cannot simulate every problem that medical staff comes across. The SimMan (Laerdal) manikins do not have the ability to simulate when excess air or fluid is in the pleural space of the lung or thorax, the drainage of which must be managed by nurses. These three symptoms are called a pneumothorax, pleural effusion and excess thoracic blood, respectively. The purpose of this research was to create an overlay for the SimMan manikin to simulate a pneumothorax, pleural effusion or excess of thoracic blood for nurses to learn and practice responsibilities during chest drainage. The process began by obtaining a scan of a manikin from the Milwaukee School of Engineering nursing department. Simultaneously developed, a pneumothorax, pleural effusion and excess thoracic blood simulator became the basis for the layout of the overlay. Beginning with the computer scan, a mold of the overlay was shaped using computer automated design programs. This mold was customized to accommodate all necessary components and ports of the simulator. The mold was printed using a stereolithography (SLA) machine and created by layering silicone to make the housing for the simulator. The overlay resulting from this research is currently being used to train nursing students at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
Cross-disciplinary biomedical engineering laboratories and assessment of their impact on student learning
ArticleGassert, J.D., Lamack, J.A., Imas, O., Fennigkoh, L., Schlick, N.E., Tritt, C.S., Gerrits, R., Gerrits, R.J.
2011 Three cross-disciplinary team-based laboratory courses were introduced into the biomedical engineering curriculum at Milwaukee School of Engineering to enhance student understanding of the interdependence of the engineering topics and biomedical science. A major challenge for the faculty was the assessment of student understanding and retention of the materials, and judging if there has been an improvement as a result in the change in the curriculum. An established concept inventory was used to assess whether student competency in signals and systems was maintained in the new curriculum, despite a reduction in lecture hours in this core discipline to accommodate a concurrent cross-disciplinary laboratory with physiology. Students from both the prior and the new curricula were assessed. Appropriate statistical tests suggest that both student groups performed similarly on all questions. An average score of 52.1±27 % (sd) was found for students associated with the curriculum without the cross-disciplinary labs. Students taking the cross-disciplinary course with the reduced lecture hours in biosystems had an average score of 46.7 ±28% (sd). The difference in performance between the two groups was not significant (p = 0.50). However, anecdotal comments from students suggest some enhancement in the students' ability to solve multi-disciplinary problems. Future work will further assess the effectiveness of the new approach by testing student knowledge in the other core discipline, physiology, and in the integration of the multiple disciplines.
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