Chip-microcomputer based safety tester for medical equipment

Electrical safety is always an important aspect of medical equipment in hospitals. With the development of clinical engineering, electrical safety testing has become a routine procedure for the clinical engineering units in hospitals. Among the various safety standard parameters for medical equipment, the leakage current is most important. This study measured different leakage currents. An intelligent digital tester was applied to test the safety quality of medical instruments automatically. This tester was based on a chip-computer (the Intel 8031). This tester was designed to be able to be set up either in normal mode or in single-failure mode for automatic testing by electric relays. All the results, which are free from manual errors, are displayed by means of an LCD unit and are printed by a micro-printer. The highly accurate output is also an advantage of this instrument, which is based on a precise signal-detecting electrical circuit and an adaptive filter. This tester can be easily used in clinical units following the Chinese standard GB9701 as well as the IEC standard 601.