EBME Forums Forums Management Medical Equipment Management Medical device power consumption

Im trying to put a list together of general device power consumption.
Does anyone have or know where I can get such a list? ECRI, Hayes,EBME?? Its all to do with carbon foot print. I would like to make our hospital management aware of the power consumption effects of medical devices. Im sure this has been done before and monitored somewhere.
I guess the list will go something like this
MRI
CT
Ultrasound
Lasers
Diathermy/ESU
Ventilation/Anesthesia
Monitoring
ETC
ETC

Some help would be appreciated

TX
TSS

Are you thinking of trading in 'Carbon Credits' I think this is 'excellent' you buy stuff that you cannot see, touch and as far as I understand has no value when compared to gold or silver, when all your investments have dwindled away the traders will shrug their shoulders and tell you "that's the way the market works"
www.advancedglobaltrading.com is the place to 'waste' your money.

Aaaah, No.Not at this stage anyway.
Just wanting management to take carbon foot prints into consideration when buying equipment. A good example is boilers. you can buy cheap and nasty but the unit will be so inefficient, it makes more sense to buy the more expensive one and benefit long term.
You can apply this logic to certain medical devices as well. Thats why Im looking for some sort of list that can give us some guidance as to where the power hungry machines live.
Tx

I haven't heard of anyone doing this. You would have to check the specification for each individual item, from the label on the machine, or the manufacturers' spec in the manual or online.

Is there a point to this? None of the devices you mention will have a very high power rating compared to, say, the hospital's heating system. And there aren't really any low-power alternatives to theatre and intensive care equipment.

I suppose you could carbon-offset by planting trees. How nice to do it in situ, and create a small wood around the hospital!

Moira

PS I would hesitate to bring this up with management. Some managers are so far removed from the daily business of healthcare that they might insist that vents are turned off overnight!

Haaaarrghh, very true indeed. I can just picture the request to shut down vents and monitoring after 6pm. LOL.
Checking each item spec would be very time consuming and too deep for this low level investigation. Suppliers are reluctant or too lazy to give this info.
I agree that heating and lighting are the biggest culprits and need to be managed accordingly. The figure we calculated on changing over from halogen to LED theatre lights came up with a 50 % power reduction and about 8-12K saving on lamps per year per hospital.
We might be limited in alternative low power equipment but making an educated decision when buying power thursty equipment should be considered.

Maybe we should give those managers a spade and a sapling to start the carbon offset.LOL
TX
TSS

No. None whatsoever.

What are we expecting to happen here? Nurses going around switching off the kit?

OK ... just plant a few trees so there will still be a few around to hug in twenty or so years time.

Next case please!

That's your opinion. People have reasons for asking questions, even if you don't think they are relevant.

It's not your call when a thread should be moved on.

Lets not waste energy throwing comments around! I could never expect a nurse to run around switching off devices that are'nt in use. Perhaps some clever dick can build that into the programming and save us all the hassle.
Perhaps you've been missing the point. By highlighting the different device's power consumption we can make people aware of the long term effects it has on our carbon foot print. Perhaps you are not aware that all your companies get charged carbon tax on your energy usage. That is about 8% of your energy bill. Thats a fair sum on a large hospital or big office building. Id rather have that in my christmas bonus than donated to the taxman!
Geoff, here's your spade and sapling.LOL

I'm not really a "tree hugger" I'm afraid (far from it). I have to get by in the real world. And I've never received a Christmas bonus (or any other that I recall) in my entire life.

Define "carbon foot print". It is another contentious issue just like "global warming"*. It is a smoke screen, a will-o'-the-wisp (or worse).

And "carbon tax" is just that. A tax (yet another). The government would tax the air we breathe if they could. And just how is this "carbon usage" measured, I wonder?

If you want to work out how much power the kit uses, it shouldn't take too long. Just get hold of the hospital's electricity bill. Or if you need a list of the "high burners", any Estates Department should be able to give you that (if they're interested, which I doubt). Apart from the x-ray equipment, and a few special systems like linear accelerators, most medical equipment (although there may be a lot it) is relatively lightweight in comparison with the hospital plant gear.

What are you getting at here? Charging folk a surcharge for having a chest x-ray? Patients have enough to worry about without wondering about "carbon debts". To be frank, that will be (and is) the least of their worries.

You can't do much about the Laws of Physics, and I don't see why folk should be punished for simply using a few more Watts than the next guy (just as long as he pays for it - in money). I bet that the famous address in Downing Street uses far more in a month than I use over five years (and I chip in for their bill, as well as forking out for my own). And as I mentioned recently, we haven't quite perfected the LED x-ray emitter just yet.

And who are these people who need to made aware? Again, as I have suggested only recently, just get them (the hospitals) to turn down the heating by two or three degrees. That way, folk might even better a bit sooner as well.

Medical equipment in government hospitals financed by the Public Purse should be purchased with only the one aim in mind:- clinical need.

Lastly, let's look at it from a slightly different angle:- how many coal-filled power stations has China commissioned this year?

That's all.

* Anyone heard from Al Gore recently?

Well, I must admit that all this carbon foot print / global warming mania is sheer nonsense. There is much agreement amongst scientists that the world is warming, but what the hell do we think we can do about it? Surely it is not all man made, it is a just natural cycle of warming and cooling of the earth. Being a greybeard (no doubt like Geoff) I remember years ago being told that we were heading for the next ice age. They whoever "they" are, are only surmising, I wouldn't worry too mcsh about it (bit like the 2000 millenium disaster when "they" told us everything was going to shut down if it had a micro chip in it) the Chinese and Indians aren't caring much, no wonder their economies are growing.