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Topic Name: Disturbance of medical equipments by mobile phone
Category: Systems Optimization
Research persons: Erik Jan Van Lieshout
Location: UvA Service and Information Centre (SIC),Binnengasthuisstraat 9 ,1012 ZA Amsterdam, Netherlands
Details
Under certain circumstances mobile phones in hospitals can disturb sensitive
devices. Researchers found now an optimal safety margin out.
Mobile phones can disturb actually medical instruments in the hospital under
certain circumstances. Researchers conclude from the Netherlands from tests at
more than 60 medical instruments.
To the results of the researchers around Erik van Lie shout of the
university of Amsterdam it can come
with a distance between mobile phone and equipment from few centimeters to
disturbances up to the dangerous total failure. Large security offers however a
distance from more than one meter, as it is also recommended in some hospitals,
writes the researchers in the specialized magazine “Critical Care”.
GPRS more seriously than UMTS
The researchers simulated mobile phones in their tests after the GPRS standard,
how they are common in completely Europe today, and after ever the UMTS standard
more importantly becoming in Germany. Over a mobile antenna the researchers
tested the effects of these signals on medical instruments in different
distances.
Possible breakdown effects were tested among other things on respirators,
sensors for the monitoring of the bodily functions, dialysis devices, infusion
pumps, external cardiac pacemakers and electronically steered special
mattresses.
With 26 of the 61 devices the researchers observed disturbances by the Handy
signal. A third of these disturbances was serious to notice about 40 per cent
clearly and in approximately a quarter of the cases was small the impairments.
GPRS signals proved thereby more frequently than disturbing than the UMTS
signals sent with smaller transmitting power. The impairments stepped with
distances of on the average three centimeters of up only in a case observed the
researchers with a distance from more than one meter a disturbance.
Controversy discussion
Restrictions and prohibitions of Handy telephone, which impose hospital
administrations patients, visitors and coworkers, are justified therefore in
principle, conclude Lie shout and its colleagues from their results. They
express themselves however for no fundamental prohibition, but for a minimum
distance to medical instruments of a meter. This in meter rule should be
combined with zones, in which mobile phones can be used freely.
The prohibition of mobile phones, valid in many hospitals, is the subject of
controversial discussions and scientific investigations again and again. Only in
March American researchers had submitted a study, which examined the influence
of mobile phones in everyday life situations in the hospital. By the telephone
calls led in close proximity to medical instruments the researchers could not
determine impairments.
About The Researcher :
Erik Jan Van Lieshout
internist-intensivist, director of Mobile Intensive Care Unit at AMC
Netherlands
chairman of IC-transport committee at Dutch Society of Intensive Care (www.nvic.nl)
internist-intensivist, head of Mobile Intensive Care Unit at Academic Medical
Center, University of Amsterdam
Past first-lieutenant / flight surgeon at Royal Netherlands Airforce,
Soesterberg
Education Universiteit van Amsterdam
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