Service Manuals for Biomedical Engineers

Many people think that a biomedical engineer/technician must know everything, well this is not the case.


As you might not be aware there are different medical equipment that has various functions. Thus they will have different designs and will be engineered in different ways in relation to their function.

GE Field Service Engineering

So what can a bio-medical engineer do?

Simply she will need to have service and operation manuals in her hands. That will aid her and helps her diagnose various problems. Often prevent malfunctions and downtime of the machines. Just by applying the recommended Preventive Maintenance procedures.


Yes, preventive maintenance is one of the most important tasks that are done by a biomedical engineer. That leads us to the most important question. Does a bio-medical engineer has all the manuals she needs?

In most cases no, why is that?

This is due to many reasons, as in some cases service manuals are not provided by suppliers or manufacturers. In other cases, suppliers will not provide their service manuals unless there are strenuous negotiations taking place. This is due to the fact that a service manual will prevent some potential incomes for the supplier. And in some cases, suppliers will not provide the service manual to a hospital as it is prohibited from manufacturers.

So what to do if you don't have a service manual?

Well, the first thing I would recommend you to do is to pay a visit to Frank's Hospital Workshop as it provides many service manuals.


You may also want to visit the iFixit Medical Device Repair page as it is growing! They are even allowing people to create a guide in a user-friendly manner, or even upload a manual directly to their website. This initiative is great especially for Biomeds working in hospitals that have lost the manuals of a certain medical device. We would like to encourage every Biomed in the world to go to the iFixit website and contribute to the library they are sharing. This will help make it easier for other Biomeds to fix medical devices and have medical devices in the best working conditions!

They are focusing their medical devices page for servicing medical ventilators from various suppliers, it is a good idea to take a look at it.

Photo by Pim Chu

If there is no Service Manual!

In some cases, some manuals are not provided or are prohibited by the supplier. You can, in this case, try to ask for the manual from the supplier if this is not possible you will need to have good knowledge related to the device at hand. There are some recommendations by the IEC especially 60601-1 for applying various tests. Such tests are recommended to be held as Preventive Maintenance procedures. Often applying preventive maintenance can ring the bell to various possible problems before they occur. Manufacturers are not approved by the FDA if their devices don't follow IEC.


Although in some cases, a luxury of time is not applicable and since time is money and when a machine not running the hospital is actually losing money until the machine is fixed. So that patients can be served by the machine. Thus sometimes it is recommended to have spare parts for the machine or in certain conditions the machine to be spared like the case of dialysis machines. As in a Large Dialysis Department; it would be highly recommended to have spare machines. So that if a machine stops working for any reason then there are one or more spare machines to take its place. As especially in the case of dialysis, the patient schedule is very critical and patients will need to take their sessions on time.

But in the case of highly expensive machines what to do?

Machines that are usually both expensive and room-sized like MRI, CT, SPECT, PET, etc... It is not possible to have spares and such machines are very complicated for a technician to take guesses!
Most likely the machine will display an error code and this error code can be referred to in the user manual.


If the problem needs the service manual it is most likely that the user manual will recommend you refer to the service manual or contact the supplier. In such a case you will have to contact the supplier to get the machine fixed.


It is highly recommended that your hospital negotiates a signed contract that is related to machine defects before the purchase of the machine. In this case, your hospital will be able to cut down some costs with the aid of the contract.

Why not Fix all Medical Equipment By Hospital Engineers? 

The other unlikely option is that you have the service manual and then you will need to train your staff as a hospital or head of a department on this machine. In this case, you will need your staff to be trained on this machine. Then get certified by the manufacturer, and it is highly ineffective and almost ridiculous to do so.


Furthermore, there are many tools and tests that are performed that can cost a fortune just to have them at your hospital workshop. Often cases they are dedicated to one machine or one model! Rendering having such tools highly expensive and inefficient in utilizing the biomedical department budget.


We can argue that companies are intentionally doing this to always have an upper hand in the hospital. But on the other hand, highly precise machines with cutting edge technologies need specific tools and testing equipment to stay in peak performance.


Some machines will have 2 or more biomedical engineers/technicians with each one of them specialized in a certain part of the machine. So please, as an in-hospital biomedical engineer weigh your options wisely. Then decide on the best possible options and try not to be so idealistic that you are unable to perform simple tasks.


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