Need seen for more biomed. engineers

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33870, 16 June 1975, Page 20

Need seen for more biomed. engineers

Christchurch hospitals could usefully employ perhaps another six biomedical engineers to service and calibrate the elaborate and expensive equipment used in hospitals today, said Dr V. Kerdemelidis, a senior lecturer in electrical engineering at the University of Canterbury.

Dr Kerdemelidis recently returned from an academic year at the University of Wisconsin, in the United States, where he studied most of the biomedical courses offering with a view to selecting courses suitable for New Zealand conditions, studied the organisation of biomedical engineering centres, and increased his knowledge of non-invasive ways of measuring peripheral blood flow. He found that biomedical engineering centres were selfcontained departments or attached to engineering schools or electrical engineering departments, or attached to medical schools. The most successful were those associated with medical schools, doing realistic work and not existing in a vacuum. Dr Kerdemelidis said that biomedical engineers should be drawn from electrical engineers with a master’s degree and after three to five years practical experience they could be certficated as

clinical engineers. They would have to do a course in physiology to learn about human anatomy and become familiar with medical terms. Tbeir work would consist of keeping instruments working and organising maintenance schedules, evaluating new equipment, and buying new equipment.

The after-sales servicing of laboratory and medical equipment was often unreliable, said Dr Kerdemelidis. It was not uncommon to pay $lO,OOO to $15,000 for equipment but even the most expensive instruments were of little use, and were even unsafe, if they were not properly mantained and calibrated.

Even if it cost a hospital $lO,OOO a year to pay for a biomedical engineer, such costs could be recouped in two or three months.