1,721,060 research outputs found
The role of bioengineer in hospital upkeep and development
No full textIn Italy, hospitals of different dimensions have been equipped, in the last years, with a clinical engineering structure that is leaded by a bioengineer whose main role is management of bioinstrumentation in terms of planning for purchases and maintenance. Nevertheless, if we think that hospital structures, particularly those with considerable dimensions, are subject to a nearly continuous upkeep process, we can locate a new crucial role for bioengineers: being the main referents of upkeep process together with hospital’s CEO. The process of upkeep and development of a hospital is always a complex multi-project that involves many steps starting from a deep planning effort. In this process, we maintain, the bioengineer should be involved starting from scratch
A decision support system for technological planning and management of field hospitals
No full textA well-planned medical response should consider the use of field hospitals 'FHs' specialised for the disasters and planned to guarantee high technical and medical standards. The purpose of this work is to support in locating technical requirements for FHs planning through an analysis of the most important and useful variables for the installation. A review of disaster medicine literature and technical norms has been carried out in order to offer support in individualising functional and technical requirements for FH planning through an analysis of the most important and useful variables for the installation. Three FH types were designed to be used in emergency and disaster medicine according to the kind of event, to the disaster area and to the local health care system capacity. Organisational, technical and technological requirements for each FH area were provided in order to improve hygiene and quality criteria for a safe and efficient system
Dual-Frequency Active RFID Solution for Tracking Patients in a Children's Hospital. Design Method, Test Procedure, Risk Analysis, and Technical Solution
No full textThis work addresses the problem of reliable identification and tracking of children in an intensive care unit in a children's hospital. Tracking and identification of patients are critical for the clinical risk management process, particularly for a children's hospital intensive care unit where patients' identities can easily be confused. This work offers a multilayer approach to the design of the process of identification and tracking; it gives an active radio-frequency identification (RFID) solution that best fits all the given constraints. The paper is divided in the following sections: design (where a multilayer method is provided, including project aims, functional requirements, and technical constraints); risk analysis [a failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) method is used to assess the risks of each stage of the process of patient management]; technical solution with a specific test phase and a review of the risk analysis results. As a result of the proposed approach, we got a strong coherence between the initial aims and the technical solution, improving patient safety and reducing the clinical risk in the process of tracking and identifying patients
RFId-based tracking and safety system
No full textIn our country and in the international context, there is a continuous interest in the issue of safety and quality of health care. In scientific literature you can find out that the problem of incorrect identification of patients is often due to errors and omissions in the processes of diagnosis and treatment, such as those found in the administration of drugs or in providing treatment. In healthcare risk of error in identification of the patient can be amplified by critical conditions as the treatment of emergency cases, the involvement of more stakeholders in the management of the case and obviously the specific clinical condition of the patient, such as loss of consciousness or confusion. The department identified in the analysis and study of the pilot project was a Department of Intensive Care. The choice of this department comes from the need to increase the security level of the process of identification of patients and to avoid possible trade. The overall goal of this project is to provide a system of aid for the reduction of cases of incorrect identification of the patient and for monitoring the position of the patient within the hospital. Finally we tested benefits and we provided for the residual error of the new process of identification and traceability after the introduction of RFID systems
Health Technology Management. A Database Analysis as Support of Technology Managers in Hospitals
No full textTechnology management in healthcare must continually respond and adapt itself to new improvements in medical equipment. Multidisciplinary approaches which consider the interaction of different technologies, their use and user skills, are necessary in order to improve safety and quality. An easy and sustainable methodology is vital to Clinical Engineering (CE) services in healthcare organizations in order to define criteria regarding technology acquisition and replacement. This article underlines the critical aspects of technology management in hospitals by providing appropriate indicators for benchmarking CE services exclusively referring to the maintenance database from the CE department at the Careggi Hospital in Florence, Italy. © 2011 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved
Hospital health care offer. A monitoring multidisciplinar approach
No full textThe experience we are going to show here represents the synergic work of researchers coming from different cultural extractions: bioengineers, architects and physicians. The Monitoring System ( MonLAB) wanted by Careggi Hospital (Florence, Italy) together with University of Florence is supervising the process of deep rethinking of the hospital itself. To do this, we developed many procedures and ICT tools to achieve these main goals: time and cost monitoring, critical moments prevision and alerts generation, real-time control of hospital evolving estate in terms of beds, ambulatories, deposits, clinicians rooms, technologies and more
An RFId Smart Container to Perform Drugs Administration Reducing Adverse Drug Events
No full textIn this work is proposed an RFId drugs container to perform a correct link between patients and their medications. The system is designed to reduce the risk of Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) in the drugs administration process. Mechanical and electronic design details are discussed. The system is based on ISO 15693 standard in order to be compatible with most of the wristbands on the market
Advanced Techniques for the synthesis of wideband array antennas
No full textAntenna arrays are the most effective solution for radiating systems that need high directivity and low sidelobe level, such as radio astronomy, remote sensing, and radar applications. Typically, antenna arrays are only designed for narrowband applications, thus several radiating systems are to be employed, one per each operating bandwidth. Recently, with the aim of reducing the number of antenna system onboard a vehicle, such as aircrafts, satellites or terrestrial vehicles, a great interest has been focused on techniques for designing wideband antenna arrays. Therefore most of the dissertation deals with novel techniques for the synthesis of both narrowband and wideband planar antenna array, aiming to provide a pretty good wide-angle scanning while imposing several constraints to meet imposed by the designer. In addition, an advanced technique for the synthesis of a wideband miniaturized single-element antenna placed in realistic environments has been developed. Furthermore an hybrid technique for the analysis of conformal arrays of antennas as well several synthesis procedures have been developed. Mutual coupling has been also taken into account
DESIGN OF RF SYSTEMS AT HF AND VHF FOR COMMUNICATIONS, RADAR AND BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS: MINIATURIZATION OF RADIATING ELEMENTS AND SYNTHESIS OF TUNING AND MATCHING NETWORKS
No full textElectrically small antennas have received an increasing interest especially for both radar and medical applications. In this dissertation, several approaches for antennas miniaturization have been studied and proposed for Over the Horizon (OTH) phased array radars. In the last case, the need to reduce the size of the antenna is dictated by the wavelengths in the HF frequency range. To this aim, most of this dissertation is focused on a new methodology for reaching both wideband and small sizes characteristics of the antenna for radar purposes. Additionally, several matching networks have been studied in order to reduce the mutual coupling between the radiating elements in the array. As a side work, by exploiting the miniaturization of the antennas, Radio Frequency coils for Magnetic Resonance Imaging application have been analyzed. A new approach has been presented in order to study the behaviour of these antennas in realistic environments
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