title: Investigations of the quality of hospital electric power supply and the tolerance of medical electric devices to voltage dips.
abstract: Medical devices driven by electric power have come to be commonly used in hospitals, and rapid changes of voltage or current can easily cause them to fail. A stable and high quality power supply is indispensable in order to maintain safety in the modern clinical setting. Therefore, we investigated the quality of the power supply in a hospital and determined the tolerance of 13 pieces of medical equipment to voltage dips. The results showed little distortion of the voltage wave. However, we found an approximately 7% momentary voltage dip caused by lightening and other problems, such as 2 to 5% periodic drops in voltage and voltage wave distortions caused by incorrect grounding. In a tolerance test, the settings of some medical devices were changed at the time of automatic reboot after a disturbance. For another device, trend information was initialized.
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Informatics, Shimane University Hospital, Enya-cho 89-1, Izumo 693-8501, Japan. e-hanada@med.shimane-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Eisuke
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hanada
authors.forename: Shuuya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Itoga
authors.forename: Kyoko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Takano
authors.forename: Takato
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kudou
mesh_terms: D011211:Electric Power Supplies; D004560:Electricity; D004582:Electronics, Medical / Q000592:standards*; D004868:Equipment Failure; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008284:Maintenance and Engineering, Hospital; D011786:Quality Control; D017751:Safety Management / Q000379:methods