Biomedical diagnostic system for device coding

Abstract

In the Biomedical Engineering field exist many issues with electronic medical devices repairing process especially when the problem is intermittent. In other words, the device works fine for some periods of time and it fails in other ones, which becomes challenge for biomedical departments to diagnose and fix the problems. When the device issues a constant and verifiable problem, technicians can rapidly proceed with the repairing of the unit, replacing bad components and performs the required tests before return the unit repaired to the customers. But, the most relevant issue, which is matter of this paper, is the event when a unit comes for repair with an intermittent problem issue stated. This is the case when, after a testing period of time, the failure is not verified in the biomedical workshop or in the lab, and then the biomedical device is returned to the customer (hospital, healthcare provider or medical center) with a diagnostic note stating “no problem found” (NPF). Once the returned unit is in the healthcare provider, it is available and ready for use; a doctor or practitioner request the unit for a medical procedure, and is when the intermittent problem show up again producing the obvious customer disgust. Then, the customer re-sends the unit to the repair center one more time for servicing, incurring a wasting of resources such as, labor time, shipping and handling costs, etc. and what is worst, bad customer satisfaction record. One of the solutions is be to have the biomedical device running continually for hours or maybe days and, at the same time one of the biomedical technician must be present until the issue be verified and confirm the problem; this is a no adequate solution, because mainly, it is so difficult to have a person at front of a device to monitor it by a long period of time. The other way is to do the same thing but in determined period of time, which could cause that the intermittent problem occurs exactly when the monitoring is missed and get a false NPF diagnostic again. Along this paper, we will describe our proposal with a valid solution to this problem, based on our experience in the biomedical engineering field and with the use of error codes which are internally generated for every biomedical device when they detect some type of failure. Our solution is developed to be used in a mobile device (Android technology) with the choice to be installed in other mobile technologies such as, iPhone, PDM, etc. Our solution to this problem is to provide a freely available database of medical devices, their error codes, what they mean, and how to fix the problems if there is one. This database will be populated with the data provided by the users, and will be approved by the administrator or moderator of the site to prevent malicious information. We believe that the benefits of having a global information source will be motivation for users of the site to take the time to add their knowledge when the site lacks it.