EBME Forums Forums Management Medical Equipment Management Suitable Printers for Anaesthetic Monitors

Can anyone advise me on a suitable printer for use with the Datex anaesthetic monitors?

It needs to be capable of fast high capacity mono printing, typically up to 20 pages per case, have a small footprint, parallel interface and be "robust".

So far we have only come up with the HP and OKI Laser printer ranges but these are rather large.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Mark

Hello Mark.

Datex Ohmeda supplied Oki 14ex printers with our Aestiva 5 Anaesthetic Machines. They are a little on the large side, but they work with the monitoring software. Hope this helps.

We haven't tried them with the Datex-Ohmeda monitors but we use Epson printers as 1st choice. They're fast and reliable and produce good quality printout. Because most of them have seperate colour cartridges they're cheaper to run than the three-in-one system used in the HP printers. If you only want black, there are several companies producing compatible cartridges which work fine and are a lot cheaper.

We've had a serious problem with HP printers connected to medical equipment producing large leakage currents - strong enough to feel ! It seems to be the design of the switch mode power supply that's the problem, plus the fact the printer is not earthed, but they feed high leakage out through the parrallel port. Non of the Epsons we've tested have this problem.

We had problems with the original printers supplied with the Aestiva anaesthetic machines. The leakage currents of the combined system consisting of monitoring, printer and anaesthetic machine/vent. exceeded limits.
Datex Ohmeda actually redesigned the machine to incorporate an isolation transformer and remove power sockets from the back of the anaesthetic machine.
The printer supplied needed to be PCL5 compatible for the Datex monitoring.
Hope this helps. Email me if you need any further info.

Thanks for the info. Our Anaesthetists prefer the large printing capacity of the Laser printers, so the OKI looks favourite at the moment - makes me think there must be a market for a small footprint printer though?