Do you want to have a look at this one?
It's come down from the ward, saying that it's not reading correctly.
It's a pretty vague description but what we're going to do now is just put a
essentially a patient simulator on it which is just one of these.
They simulate a patient's ECG signal.
This will give us a good idea of what's actually happening with the system,
if there's anything wrong with it.
But if there is, this is probably the best way to find out.
You should start seeing it pop up on the screen now. There we go.
There is a definite line between what's a medical device and what's not a medical device.
At the end of the day, we have to make
a clear understanding that anything that's
connected to a patient is a medical device.
A medical device has to meet certain criteria.
It has to be tested at a certain interval
under any ISO standard
so you can't be treating it as just your standard computer.
As far as we're concerned, this machine is fine to go back.
We'll keep it with us for another little bit and
then we'll send it probably back this afternoon.
So the screen didn't supply any incorrect flow.
I'm Steven Lucano.
I'm the senior biomedical engineer at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital
in the Department of Medical Technology and Physics.
Initially I did a trade in electronic servicing in domestic equipment.
From there, having an electronics background, I started
in here and did pretty much on the job training.
Then I actually supplemented my education.
I went and did an undergraduate degree in Health and Computer Science.
I've done anatomy and physiological training within the course they provide to nurses.
You know, because it really is good to understand what you're trying to measure.
OK. Not that it's just a squiggle on a screen
that looks like something and alarms when it doesn't reach a certain parameter.
What are you trying to measure? Do you understand what
the integration is of the equipment to the patient?
So the electronics background, how the signal processing is happening
what is the device trying to measure, why is it measuring it like that.
It's working perfectly. Oh, that's good. We'll shut it down and we're done.
This is one of our critical care devices so this is our anaesthesia machine.
This involves two disciplines essentially so there's a biomechanical division
which essentially handles all the gas exchanges
and the monitoring side which involves all the real-time wave form
monitoring while the patient is anaesthetised.
I have an opportunity now to look at the gas side of this which is the ventilator here
and we've also got two anaesthetic agent delivery units there.
These are all modular devices. What we'll do is we'll just take a module out.
This module, when it's hooked into this rack,
will actually measure all your vital signs
so it'll measure your ECG,
non-invasive blood pressure, your oxygen saturation, temperature
and invasive blood pressures and we can check all those with our simulators,
making sure the correct measurements are coming up, making sure they're accurate.
Module
and this is our tester.
Engineers are dedicated to certain areas of the hospital,
so there'll be an engineer in ICU, one in theatres, one in emergency, one in cardiovascular medicine
on a yearly rotation basis.
If you're particularly a person that's good on an IT or computer level,
you could look after the medical ICT component, for instance, central stations.
A lot of the medical devices now are using standard operating systems to monitor patients.
Someone who's really got a good frontline skill to repairing devices
to a border or component level so they would be a good bench engineer.
Another person could have a good personality
but has enough understanding of the electronics,
so they would be sent out as a field engineer, for instance, to deal with the nurses, the clinicians.
As far as central stations goes and patient monitoring
that's where the IT component is so if something happens to it,
if it crashes or glitches for whatever reason, to understand the computer basics behind it,
how to resolve that doesn't need your standard restart.
Has hardware failed on the computer? Was it just
a glitch where a reboot is more than enough?
Patient monitors in the high criticality wards
are then monitored by
a central computer which for the most part looks like a standard computer
but essentially it's a medical device because it's relaying patient information.
So it's actually very critical, so for instance, your coronary care wards
where one nurse could be looking after four bed areas,
it's easier to monitor from via a central location.
I think I was pretty good at a people-person level.
I had good interactions with all clinical staff
so now what I do at a senior engineer level,
an administrative level is that now I will supervise some of the guys out there
plus also be involved with equipment that's purchased by the
hospital so I will sit on tender panels, evaluation committees.
I do get to work on equipment occasionally, not as often,
you know, as I used to but I do still get to get hands on.
You know, it's not a boring job. It's actually a very exciting job.