News Summary up to 1999
| Nov 1999 | Teamwork key to school's success | 
|
| Mar 1997 | FMC 'entrepreneurs' eye the world Tailoring our knowledge to the needs of our clients | |
| Jun 1996 | Inaugural biomedical graduates FBE staff get Advanced Diploma in Biomedical Engineering | |
| 1990 | The Cutting Edge Advances in circuit board design | |
| 1987 | New monitor to help study SIDS |
News Articles
Teamwork key to school's success
FMC News: Nov 1999
'Never say never' could well be the motto of the four key groups that provide support to the School of Medicine. "Generally speaking, if the equipment isn't available we'll design and build it," said Brian Bridger, the Manager of the Construction and Development Group in the Biomedical Engineering Department.
The groups - also including Diagnostic Laboratories, Clinical and Computing - offer support, including management of more than 7000 pieces of medical equipment, the construction and development of new equipment for research, hardware and software support and the maintenance of equipment. The four groups employ a total of 34 staff, 10 university employees and 16 Health Commission employees. Mr Bridger said that each of the groups enjoyed recognition, both on a local and international level.
"Construction and Development has an international reputation for its design and construction of equipment for research. For example, we make pain scales in 10 different languages which we sell internationally. Also we have sold esophageal reflux equipment to the MAYO clinic in the USA." However, he said the group's biggest achievements had been the building of 80 sleep apnoea alarms, which were used for a research project into Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and establishing a program to supervise Engineering students for major design and manufacturing projects.
Mr Bridger said a team effort went into each and
every project. "We have an internationally recognised Biomedical
Engineer in our Director, John Robson. He's put together an excellent
team and it works very well. We're accountable for our costs,
and for producing world-class instrumentation for research.
If it wasn't for the researchers, we wouldn't be here. However
I believe we contribute greatly to their high quality endeavours
and world class standing in research and teaching."
 Peter Ravenscroft testing an electrophysiology system |
FMC 'entrepreneurs' eye the world
FMC News: March 1997
FMC's medical scientists have become international entrepreneurs in a bold new initiative to market their expertise to the world. They have established a training institute which teaches specialised medical and health technology courses to overseas hospitals and corporate health professionals. Called the Flinders Institute for Health Technology Training (FIHTT), the fledging institute's first courses include participants from South East Asia and South Africa, corporate mining group Western Mining and the World Health Organisation.
"We have a very talented workforce and a huge amount of expertise," said FIHTT founder and chairperson John Stirling. "I wanted to use the talents of our people more widely by establishing formal training courses in niche areas." John said scientists had already developed a range of internal and external training courses but these were carried out on an ad-hoc basis. Last year, he formed a group of "like-minded health professionals" who decided to consolidate these small courses and find opportunities to market them more widely. The result was FIHTT - a joint initiative between FMC and SouthPath SA. It is currently negotiating a formal link with the Flinders University of SA.
John said FIHTT's focus is to market courses to South East Asia, Australia's corporate sector and groups such as the United Nations and the Australian International Development Assistance Board. However, he says his biggest challenge is to encourage more medical scientists and biomedical engineers to think like entrepreneurs. "Many more of us at FMC have the potential to turn our knowledge and world-class expertise into FIHTT courses we can sell to the world," John said.
He encouraged those who were aware of training opportunites in medical or biomedical science or who ran internal courses to contact either himself or John Robson, Director Biomedical Engineering at Flinders Medical Centre. "There are niche markets for many courses and we can tailor our knowledge to the needs of our clients," he said.
 John Stirling, FIHTT, Christino Narciso, WHO Fellow, John Robson, Dir FBE and a young looking Noel Kitto, FBE Laboratory Manager inspecting a radiation / luminescence analyser. |
Inaugural biomedical graduates
FMC News: June 1996
These are the first students to graduate from the Advanced Diploma in Biomedical Engineering. The two-year part-time course is the only one of its kind in Australia and combines life sciences and engineering so that graduates can combine technological expertise with the needs of medical staff.
Twelve students from Flinders Medical Centre, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the private sector completed the course.
"Medical technology is at the forefront of change and it is a challenge just keeping up with those changes, but we are acutely aware that people working in biomedical engineering need a good understanding of the life sciences as well, " said John Robson, who is head of Biomedical Engineering at FMC and a lecturer in the Diploma course.
|
|
The Cutting Edge
FMC News: 1990, by Peter Ravenscroft, Biomedical Engineering Department
The Design and Development Section of the Biomedical Engineering Electronics Group has, for some six years, been designing and building sophisticated equipment for research projects throughout the hospital. The section carries a project through from concept, to circuit design, to prototype "lash-up", and final construction. Every aspect of manufacture is performed by each member of the section, including sheet metal work for special cabinets, machining of hardware where necessary, and -most importantly -the design, layout, and construction of printed circuit boards. Years ago, when solid state electronics in the form of transistors began to replace valves in electronic designs, it was quickly realised that new methods of construction were appropriate, and so printed circuit boards superseded the old scheme of running wires point to point. Printed circuit board manufacture has been refined and simplified and is now the basis for virtually all low power electronic constructions.
A printed circuit board is made by producing "artwork" consisting of pads and connecting lines on semi-transparent material, usually at a scale of two time enlargement. The artwork is then photographed to produce a very high contrast image on clear film. Originally, artwork was produced manually by sticking adhesive pads and drafting tape on to a sheet of melamine drafting material, and much effort went into achieving accurate placement of pads and tracks. Eventually designers considered automating the circuit board layout process. The only practical way to do this seemed to be to use computers, so programmes were developed which simulated the manual pad and tape layout system. Initially large mainframe computers were needed to run these programmes, but with the development of the personal computer just before 1980 and explosion of technology which multiplied the power of PC's many fold over the last decade, it is now possible for anyone with a few thousand dollars to spare to own their own circuit board layout system.
The first programmes simply allowed a designer to duplicate the manual pad and tape layout method and then use a plotter to pro- duce a hard copy which went through all the normal production processes. As the capabilities of both computers and programmers improved however, additional features were added to the original systems. First, the ability to create a schematic diagram was provided. This allowed a designer to draw the schematic circuit diagram for a device and from the circuit produce a "net list" -a list of all the required connections for a circuit board -and input it to a layout programme. The layout then showed a "rats-nest" of connections on a computer screen and the designer simply had to tidy up the result to produce a circuit board layout. The next logical step was to make the computer also do the tidying up and this was eventually achieved after a great deal of programming effort. Such a system is called an "auto router" and all the current programmes which claim any level of sophistication have this ability. Some of the more complex programmes have the capability to also create a parts list and automatically place the components on a layout, thus relieving the designer from even that chore. It must be remembered however, that a computer is not an intelligent device and programmers have to work within the limitations of the hardware, so that a computer aided design -CAD design -is not yet necessarily the ultimate. This will probably change in the future with the development of smarter systems, but for the present the designer of a circuit still provides a considerable input to the final result.
The Electronics Department of Biomedical Engineering in Flinders Medical Centre purchased circuit board layout software some years ago and virtually all projects are now done using it. The advantages of using CAD design become apparent over a period of time and as the users gain more expertise. They include a dramatic saving of time, particularly when a board layout has to be modified, and very simple archiving of most of the information for a project on floppy discs. More recently the Department has added to its arsenal of design tools a programme which can have a schematic circuit entered into it and then analyse the performance of the circuit under all sorts of conditions. Thus a circuit can be tried without the designer having to put the traditional "lash up" together and another time consuming step can be eliminated or at least minimised. This programme sometimes uncovers unforeseen aspects of a circuit's performance, and allows the designer to avoid unpleasant surprises in the later stages of construction.
In addition to circuit analysis and board layout software, the Department also uses a general purpose drafting programme and a mathematical computation and analysis programme in its everyday work. These all add up to a powerful set of tools in the design environment and help keep Flinders Medical Centre near the forefront of development in medical electronics. The future of CAD design in the burgeoning world of personal computers seems to promise almost limitless possibilities. Both hardware and software will improve beyond recognition, simplifying the task of design even more and freeing designers to concentrate on concepts rather than the more mundane tasks. The prospects are exciting and it is a privilege to be involved at the cutting edge.
 Peter Ravenscroft -Circuit board design in action |
|
FMC News: May 1987
During 1987 the Biomedical Engineering Department was commissioned by Dr Billy Tao of the Paediatrics Department to design, develop, and manufacture a number of inexpensive and reliable apnoea monitors to assist in a novel approach to SIDS {Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) -that of possible prevention.
SIDS is now the most common cause of death among babies aged between one week and 12 months in industrialised countries, and results in about 600 deaths in Australia per year. Dr Tao's project relied greatly on a simple, reliable monitor which would alert a parent should its infant cease breathing. Part of the project was to teach resuscitation, and this is currently being administered by ASPIRE. The monitor, of which 60 were to be manufactured, was to have no leads attached to the infant's body, be battery operated and last for three to four months on a set of batteries. It should have a back-up duplicate set of electronics, should a failure occur, and most importantly, be free of "nuisance alarms".
The prototype unit won the 1987 South Australian Playford Prize for modular design and has the following features: A thin foam mattress rests in a plastic moulded base, which also contains a compartment for the printed circuit board and its components and batteries. The entire unit is less than 50mm thick and fits into a cradle. A second unit, for larger and older infants, was also developed. There are no exposed cables and a single on/off switch activates both circuits. The perceptible movement of the infant during breathing is detected by two microphones responding to pressure changes in a tube assembly fitted beneath the mattress in the base. Unwanted movement artifacts, for example, cardiogenic and low frequency air pressure changes, are filtered out by a unique electronic filter. The electronic circuits are continuously resetting as long as movement is detected. With the absence of movement for 15 seconds an. indicator illuminates and an audible alarm indicates an apnoeic episode. After a further 10 seconds of non-movement, a continuous alarm indicates that resuscitation may be required.
To date, 80 monitors have been manufactured. They have proven to be extremely free of 'nuisance alarms' -that is, the monitors have been able to detail the very shallow breathing into which infants lapse, sometimes for many minutes. Dr Tao has indicated that possibly two infants, whose monitors alarmed and who were subsequently found to be in distress, could have been possible SIDS statistics. The project is ongoing and promises to give much needed data on infant breathing.
About the Author: Brian Bridger joined the Flinders Medical Centre prior to its opening in 1976 and set up the Electronics section of the Biomedical Engineering Department. He now supervises the Construction and Development Group responsible for new projects. Prior to this he worked for 10 years with the Physics Department at Flinders University, and prior to that with BOTH Equipment in Adelaide and Siemens Ediswan in the UK. In his spare time he loves to relax in his boat on the Murray and is a very keen aeromodeller and radio control "nut".
John Robson and Brian Bridger working on the design of the SIDS
monitor