EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Technical Assistance Programming Biotek 601-Pro

Your right RoJo its about as Cost Effective as spending 3-4 hrs fixing a Tens M/C ( value £40 ish ) which I have seen done. !!

Hey Robert, when you have the time, can you post a list of jobs “worth doing” (in order of priority of course), so I can avoid wasting any more time on nebulous work like database programming? How do you know that the guys are not coding in their own time, man?

In my humble opinion, some things are worth doing just for the craic, including fixing bits of kit discarded by others as being “not cost-effective to repair”. It's a challenge, dude. You probably learn far more that way than from any formal course (...also expensive, in both time and money). The way things are going (in the so-called “West”), no-one will be willing, able, or allowed to get into any form of hands-on work at all!

From experience, a lot of guys doing this kind of database programming stuff do it in their own time!!. No names no pack drill though.

I agree ROJO, downloading from the 601 would seem quite fruitless and time consuming for a technician to do as the software is peanuts or possibly free download from biotek.

This software I did was in my own time and it added functionality that was not there. I.e. the software that we had would not transmit information to the device, it would only recieve it for logging purposes.

We programmed up the 601 with a ward/dept/zone to ppm and saved a couple of minutes per device entering all the class/type/dept/serial etc etc details in.

doing 6 month inspections across thousands of assets soon racks up some time savings when the data is provided for you upon entering the asset number/id

The code was a quick snippet in quickbasic which was nothing too hard to get functional, more of a learning experience in data comms / interface and gave me (and anyone else who attempts this kind of stuff) a bit of a mission / drive in doing something to help the department.

The database side really is all down to personal preference and as much time / little time can be spent on interfacing it to you existing system to import / export data to add even more functionality.

What you do in your own time is totally up to you and I agree can be a lot more fun.
Until the police catch you.....
Robert

It’s nothing more than any tech worth his salt should be able to do. All part of the job I would have thought. I can’t understand the mindset where people are frightened to have a go. From my experience I would have to say that this tendency is most marked in the UK National Health Service. Perhaps it’s all part of the dumbing down, and “no one is allowed to fail” propaganda that has been piled on the younger British techs (no wonder the NHS is in such a sorry state).

I think you're doing technicians in the NHS a discredit Geoff - there's a difference between "having a go" and prioritising time/using it effectively. I don't see field service engineers working in the private-sector doing much of this sort of thing either. I have seen NHS R&D technicians doing this sort of thing - large Medical Physics departments have these people usually. As a technician I'm not going to "have a go" at anything just because I just "feel like it" and I'm interested - particularly design or development of hardware or software - I'm perfectly capable of doing it and doing it well but my job-specification is maintenance not development. My point being that just because you're interested and can do it doesn't mean it's justified or required. Not "having a go" certainly shouldn't be held against individuals who have other priorities. In my experience "Having a go" is normally the preserve of managers or other individuals with a "roving remit" who are able to work autonomously outside routine maintenance activities.

Nonsense!

Well, from my perspective, I'd rather spend the extra two minutes per PPMs or repairs than programming code that's already been written by someone else a hundred times over and is being offered FOC by others. Sitting writing comms and parsing protocols to shuffle data and commands between a safety tester and a PC doesn't "do it" for me unfortunately - that's what clinical computing and R&D are for - but whatever "floats your boat" I suppose.........

My view is that when the PC, databases and VB came along it was a blessing for those technicians who wanted to reinvent themselves as gurus in the computing field - it's relatively straightforward, interesting, absorbing, impresses people who aren't computer-oriented and best of all you don't have to get your hands dirty. Every department's got an individual with a leaning like this this I reckon - can it be justified in a small EBME/Medical Physics department (unless it's out of hours)? Obviously, it's rife.

There’s a nice saying that says something like when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging!

But on the contrary, I’ve found that many biomed departments don’t have much savvy when it comes to PC stuff. I can’t really understand this, as I consider it to be part of the techie ethos. The PC has been with us for about 25 years now, after all. What’s the big deal? The most useful people I’ve had the pleasure of working with have been, shall we say, all-rounders.

As I’ve said before, Richard – you can be anything you want. We don’t mind.