Does non-medical grade power cord compromise the safety of medical equipment?

Abstract

A tertiary care 1000 bedded hospital contains more than 10,000 pieces of equipment worth approximately 41 million USD, while the power cords supplied along with the imported equipment do not comply with country-specific norms. Moreover, the local vendors procure power cords with type D/M plug to complete installation and also on-site electrical safety test is not performed. Hence, this project was undertaken to evaluate the electrical safety of all life-saving equipment purchased in the year 2013, referring to the guidelines of International Electrotechnical Commission 62353, the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) and National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)-99 hospital standard for the analysis of protective earth resistance and chassis leakage current. This study was done with a measuring device namely electrical safety analyser 612 model from Fluke Biomedical.

Keywords

• Device under test
• electrical safety test
• equipment leakage current
• protective earth resistance