An Interview with Hetal Bhatt: Chief Biomedical Engineer of Bhailal Amin General Hospital, Vadodara
There seems to be a lot of confusion on whether a biomedical engineer is a necessity or a luxury for a small or medium-sized hospital. We thought of asking the experts who are working as a biomedical engineer for hospitals like Bhailal Amin Hospital for more than 20 years to get an insight of how impactful they have been for their hospital. So here we start the interview.
Q : What are the financial aspects of having an in-house biomedical engineer?
- In our hospital, we have had a lot of experience where we’ve minimized the overall cost of maintaining an equipment. One such experience is when a colour doppler’s power supply was damaged. It costs around ₹ 3–3.5 Lakh, AMC guys directly said to replace the power supply but we repaired it in-house within just ₹ 5000. Dialysis machine has a main board, we had some issues in the operational circuit due to which we weren’t getting conductivity, we managed to repair it in-house at a cost less than ₹ 10000 which would have cost around ₹ 1–1.25 Lakh on a replacement.
- Hence AMC/CMC only ensures replacement of an equipment even for small problems which can be easily repaired by any trained and qualified biomedical engineer resulting in a huge financial relief for the hospital.
- In the long run, an in-house qualified and trained biomedical engineer is much more cost-effective to save a hospital from this kind of financial burdens.
Q : What if hospitals have AMC/CMC? Do you think a hospital having AMC/CMC needs a biomedical engineer?
- Under AMC/CMC, the equipment is only replaced and not repaired which becomes a huge financial burden for any hospital. Apart from this, the engineer of the company under AMC is majorly concerned with the profits of their company, so whether the problem or the solution of the problem pointed out by him in the case of an equipment breakdown is true or not, can only be verified by an in-house biomedical engineer whose primary concern is to avoid any financial losses for their hospital.
- Apart from this, for even tiniest of a problem in an equipment, the hospital has to wait for days for the engineer of the company to come and solve the problem.
Q : How does a biomedical engineer help from the patient’s safety point of you?
- Nowadays, Government has made it mandatory for every hospital to get NABH certification and its primary objective is the patient’s safety. Hospitals in the final stage of certification compulsorily need an in-house biomedical engineer and it has only been made mandatory because a biomedical engineer makes it possible for a hospital to ensure maintaining maximum safety measures for its patients.
- For instance, if a surgeon needs to set the power in a Quadri for cutting or coagulation, a biomedical engineer ensures if the power set by the surgeon is being delivered correctly or not which is extremely critical not only in gynecology, laparoscopy, or orthopaedic but majorly during a critical surgery of tumor or craniotomy on a sensitive part, at that time the power will only be delivered properly if the quadri has been calibrated prior to the surgery. You may understand how critical it is if the power you have set is 4 or 5 for operating a sensitive part and the quadri malfunctions and starts delivering the power in the range of 9–10 then an unaffected nerve might get damaged. A biomedical engineer plays an important role in avoiding such kind of situations in a hospital.
Q : What differences do you see between an in-house qualified biomedical engineer and an unqualified, untrained technician as a consultant for a hospital?
- When I started my professional career in the year 1992, even I was untrained but I was not unqualified, I got my training over a period of time through my professional career and hence hospitals should try to hire qualified biomedical engineers with some prior experience on the subject. An unqualified professional can do more harm than gain. Although if you have someone to train the engineer than hospitals may even opt for untrained engineer although qualification should still be the must.
- In our days, we used to study simple ventilator functions like passing a tidal volume of 500 ml through a piston to the lungs but today ventilators are microcontroller processor based which needs to be maintained by a qualified biomedical engineer who continuously learns and adapts to the upcoming new technology.
- Hospitals should also ensure a healthy working environment and a good pay-scale such that a biomedical engineer keeps working for the same hospital for a longer duration.
Q : So finally, What is the Importance of having an in-house Biomedical Engineer for a hospital?
- A Biomedical Engineer’s role ranges from equipment purchase, equipment maintenance to an identification of equipment brand. A Chinese equipment is cheap but lacks durability and hence tends out to be costlier in the long run than a branded equipment. Many companies are selling Chinese equipment by labelling them as an Indian equipment, a biomedical engineer can identify if an equipment is Chinese or not on the basis of their technical knowledge which can help hospitals to minimize their losses in the long run.
- Today, Bhailal Amin Hospital has the latest equipments with Cutting-edge technologies like fibro scan, capsule endoscopy etc which cannot be maintained on a technician level, it can only be maintained properly by a qualified and experienced biomedical engineer.
- In the case of an equipment breakdown, a biomedical engineer ensures the breakdown time to be as small as possible by checking if the equipment has any minor problems which can be repaired immediately. Even if the problem is complex, a biomedical engineer can repair the equipment by communicating with the company officials if the equipment is covered under AMC/CMC. In Bhailal Amin Hospital, we give records of the breakdown time for every breakdown to the upper management. Hence, if an equipment stops working at 10:00 AM, and then by 10:15 AM or 10:30 AM, the equipment was repaired and started working, we send the breakdown time as 15–30 mins.
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