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Stand-Alone Instruments
News Release from: Rigel Medical | Subject: Rigel 277 electromedical tester
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 19 June 2006
Electromedical tester has brains to us
RFID
Advanced electromedical test technology is helping one of the world's foremost treatment centres for sick children ensure the safety of patient connected electronic medical devices and equipment.
Advanced electromedical test technology is helping one of the world's foremost treatment centres for sick children ensure the safety of patient connected electronic medical devices and equipment Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust (GOSH) in London is an international centre of excellence for treating sick children
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 11 Jul 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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The 150-year-old hospital treats 100,000 children each year and has pioneered considerable ground breaking medical research in a number of paediatric areas.
To ensure the availability of safe and effective medical technology for patient care, the hospital's Biomedical Engineering department uses an innovative "braincell" concept developed by Rigel Medical as part of a formal preventive maintenance protocol that covers some 18,000 electromedical devices.
This new braincell technology is linked to the Rigel 277 electromedical tester and uses smart RFID data tags to extend the concept of traditional barcode test systems for the automatic identification and testing of medical equipment.
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The Rigel 288s will be used by Maquet Field Service Engineers to carry out routine test and inspection of a variety of electromedical equipment in hospitals throughout the UK.
At GOSH, a central medical equipment register automatically identifies those electromedical devices due for periodic safety testing in line with the IEC technical standards.
When the brain cell attached to a medical device is scanned with a simple read/write probe, the Rigel 277 tester automatically recalls the previous test information and prompts the test engineer to repeat the required test sequence, significantly reducing test time and eliminating the possibility of test errors.
When the test is completed, test data are transmitted back from the instrument to be held in the smart tag, enabling service records to be automatically updated after each test routine and to remain with the equipment for its lifetime.
The large data storage capacity of the tags mean that all product information including asset ID, test class, site and location, previous test date, test engineer, applied part configuration and a four-line comment field can be recorded and stay with the item.
GOSH also has a specialist internal mechanical and engineering section that designs and develops customised medical instrumentation, used particularly by research departments and in clinical applications.
Electrical safety testing is carried out as a matter of course on the development of all new equipment and also following any repairs or modifications to medical equipment.
Bhaskar Patil, Head of Medical Electronics and Mechanical Engineering at GOSH said: "We have a very well developed planned maintenance system to ensure the safety of all medical devices used in the hospital".
"Clearly in such a busy hospital environment our equipment is in almost constant use and heavy demands are made on our medical devices".
"We therefore aim for a 5% maximum downtime for any equipment needing maintenance, repair or testing".
"The use of the Rigel braincell system plays an integral part of this process by providing fast one-touch retesting of medical equipment, reducing paperwork and giving our engineers the ability to work at maximum efficiency".
The braincells and the handheld read/write module are available as accessories to the multipurpose Rigel 277 medical equipment tester.
Specifically designed to test in accordance with all main industry standards, including IEC/EN60601-1, MDA DB9801 and IEC/EN61010, the Rigel 277 Plus can test electromedical equipment with multi type applied parts in a single test routine.
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