Question: what is the engineering process in hospitals

Simon Marchant answered on 22 Jun 2015:

You see my point of view for engineering in hospitals is totally different to William’s – so he was right to say it depends on who you ask! I work in clinical engineering, which is specifically engineering inside hospitals, dealing with medical equipment and manning particularly state-of-the-art equipment that needs an engineer present just to run.

From the clinical engineering side of things, engineering in hospitals is split into four main areas. First there’s equipment management, which is where we look after every bit of equipment in the hospital (in my hospital alone there are over 56,000 bits of equipment under the care of almost 50 technologists and engineers), from buying the right kit to checking it and training staff, maintaining it, repairing it when it breaks, and decommissioning (throwing away). Then there’s rehabilitation, which is where engineers get involved with helping patients who have had accidents or diseases to get back to a normal life: we make custom wheelchairs, analyse walking to find out what is wrong, fit devices that help people to walk normally, and design and provide electronic systems to help people who need help to communicate or control their surroundings. The third area is clinical measurement, where engineers don’t get involved with everything (most of what goes on in hospitals is measurement of some sort) but we do run some more advanced measurement clinics, like urodynamics (the flow of pee) and thermal imaging. Finally, there is development, which is certainly not exclusively in hospitals and coversmore of what William does: this is designing and making the medical equipment of the future!

So that’s a quick overview of some of the engineering processes in hospitals. There’s a lot to it!