Design of a pressure and flow measuring equipment for medical use

Abstract

Accuracy and reliability of measurements play a very important role in health-careregardless of the field which may be therapy, diagnosis or life support. Medical equipment,on the other hand, is subject to failure due to mechanical damage, user abuse, component failure, aging or some other reasons and may cause undesired or irreversible results. Therefore, periodic inspections of medical equipment are essential to ensure safe andreliable use of medical equipment. In this thesis, blood pressure and gas flow measurement in medical fields have beenfocused on and a "Pressure and Flow Measuring Equipment", has been developed. Thisprototype instrument is, presently, capable of testing non-invasive blood pressuremeasuring apparatus and bedside oxygen flow meters with a high level of accuracy, henceproviding a valuable inspection tool for preventive maintenance. The accuracy of the instrument has been tested against calibrated reference testequipment. The results obtained show that the prototype instrument developed is able tomeasure pressure in 100% agreement with the reference while it can measure gas-flowwithin 95% confidence interval.|Keywords: Blood Pressure, Gas-flow in Medicine, Pressure Measurement, Flow Measurement, Preventive Maintenance in Medicine.