This blog post is part of a series titled Taking the Lead: An Inside Look at Eskenazi Health's Leadership. Different leaders throughout Eskenazi Health will be featured, giving an inside look at their work roles, backgrounds, passions and even hobbies. We hope you enjoy learning about some of the exceptional leaders Eskenazi Health is proud to employ.
Tasked with overseeing and maintaining medical equipment and other related systems, Matt Royal is the director of Eskenazi Health Biomedical Engineering. Although he grew up thinking he would play in a rock band his whole life, Royal’s path led him to clinical engineering.
He earned three technologically based degrees and certificates from Indiana State University and Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), including an Associate of Science degree in electronics and computer technology, a Bachelor of Science degree in technology management and an IUPUI certificate in clinical laboratory equipment technology.
Following his undergraduate career, Royal spent the next several years working in multiple health care systems in Indianapolis. His first job landed him at Eskenazi Health as a repair assistant, where he was eventually promoted to a technician. Hired next at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis as a clinical engineer, Royal was promoted to management and supported what was referred to at that time as the nine hospitals outside the 86th Street campus.
In 2008, Royal went to the new IU Health Arnett Hospital in Lafayette, Ind., and spent six years as the clinical engineering manager. Thanks to another promotion, he developed the operational strategy for the Academic Healthcare Center for IU Health (Riley, Methodist and University hospitals).
In 2014, Royal was hired as the director of biomedical engineering at Eskenazi Health. Royal’s responsibilities are split into different categories, including projecting and planning new equipment, high visibility repairs, specialty requests, regulatory and operations.
While regular maintenance of equipment is more of a routine matter for Royal, most days are different in terms of repairs. “You never know what is going to break,” he said.
For Royal, choosing Eskenazi Health felt like a homecoming and part of a fraternity of sorts as his career started here. Furthermore, alumni from other organizations he worked with immediately knew how special it was to work for the hospital. While he appreciates the culture, mission and values of Eskenazi Health, Royal mostly values its emphasis on education and growth which has enabled him and his team to develop into what he would consider to be one of the best in-house clinical engineering departments.
Royal feels that his greatest contribution is taking an already mature program beyond what other clinical engineering programs are doing by developing new skill sets that are required to support a state-of-the-art facility, such as medical device integration into the EPIC, cyber security management for medical devices and becoming a catalyst for clinical and support departments.
Royal is an active member of multiple organizations outside of work. He currently serves as the president of the Indiana Society for Healthcare Engineering and holds officer roles for the American Society for Healthcare Engineering and Indiana Biomedical Society. He is also a member of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI).
In his spare time, Royal enjoys antique tractor projects, playing the guitar, gardening, playing golf, reading, classic comedies and attending concerts. He also likes to raise chickens, ducks and turkeys. While he might be known as a biomedical engineer who yearns to help others in the community that need it, Royal would also like to be remembered as a person who finds good in all people.