From the dropper to tomograph…
From the dropper to tomograph…
…Such range of medical equipment and devices is presented in a great variety in our Center.
By the way, speaking about computer tomography. In 1960s Godfrey Hounsfield who was an engineer in EMI, British company, had developed a technology of human body’s scanning with the help of X-rays. At the start EMI didn’t have enough budgets for implementation of new invention but later sound-recording branch of the company situated on Abbey Road had signed the contract with “The Beatles” group. EMI earned from this collaboration millions that allowed contributing to industrial development of computer tomograph. Finally, English engineer and physics Godfrey Hounsfield from “EMI Ltd.” designed “EMI-scanner” – the first computer X-ray tomograph that was tested in 1971 and then got a Noble Prize on physiology and medicine.
The service of medical and engineering systems – this is the name of the department of our Center responsible for medical equipment functioning. The times when the lancet was the only surgical instrument run deeply into the past. Our State spares immense sums of money for modern equipment and our goal is to do our best so that this sophisticated and various equipment works properly and bear necessary results. Medical engineers of our Center perform a lot of light repairs, routine activities not always creative but necessary for maintaining the operability of medical equipment. Despite everything there are significant victories in daily grind. For example, an episode when the engineers managed to find defective microchip in the MRI-machine, then – a destroyed element and as a result, they had changed the broken dime diode and restored the operability of an expensive device.
Medical and engineering service of our Center works on the ground of the Letter of the Public Health Ministry of Russia “Technical support services of medical equipment” where the regulations for technical support, repairing services, implementation and other actions connected with medical equipment.
All the engineers of our service are well-experienced professionals manifested themselves in various medical institutions of our country. Our engineers have been working in Kazakhstan, Norilsk, Salekhard and Novosibirsk.
Our medical engineering service has been taking an active part in placing of medical appliances in equipping our ORs for 10 years already; they directly participate in purchasing organizations, mantling and implementation of many high-technological medical apparatus such as INNOVA angiograph (“General Electric”), powerful 3T MRI-machine, mobile computer tomographs, navigation systems, operational microscopes and many other types of equipment. This definitely allows increasing the number of surgical procedures and raising their level of quality.
A wide range of medical equipment demands constant self-education of our medical engineers, and bring us into difficult cases of their defects. In 2018 the conference on “Specific features of engineering systems and medical equipment running in the Federal Center of high-tech medical technologies” was held at the premises of the Federal Neurosurgical Center with goal of experience exchange.
Apart from immediate repairing services a particular attention is paid to periodic technical services aiming at maximal reduction of any equipment defects and failures. The significant part of our equipment has been functioning for 10 years already, starting from the Center launch that is why the number of equipment failures arises. Besides, manufacturing companies announce stopping technical support of this or those types of equipment from time to time; that means that we are unable to purchase necessary spare parts and to replace some devices and machines. We solve some problems ourselves, in other cases we enlist the services of third party providers, purchase spare parts, and modernize existing equipment.
Alongside with the existing equipment modernization and replacement of old models by the most advanced equipment, our medical and engineering service, as the whole Center, has the plans and long-term goals on equipment installation and settlement of the newest high-technological medical equipment. Maybe cyber- or gamma-knife, PET-machine or something else could be in our “park”.
