The Roundtable: The inside scoop on test equipment

Test equipment is vital. The job of Certified Biomedical Equipment Technician relies heavily on these high-tech tools to do their job. Rarely does a day go by where they don’t have to test something as part of a repair process. Test equipment is as important to a biomed as a hammer is to a carpenter.

So, what are the most important features of test equipment? What are the latest and greatest advances from the leading manufacturers? How can a facility with a limited budget make sure it has all of the test equipment it needs to service its devices?

Lucky for us a group of experts in the field of test equipment sat down and answered some of these questions and others to provide insight into the fast-evolving world of test equipment.

The panel of contributors is made up of Vice President of Sales and Marketing for BC Group International Inc. Ken O’Day, President of Datrend Systems Inc. Ron Evans, Associated Director at RIGEL Medical John Backes, RIGEL Medical’s National Business Development Manager Jack Barrett, and Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Radcal Corp. Patrick Pyers. The answers provided by these individuals are the opinions of the submitters and not necessarily the opinions of the company that employes them.

1. What are the latest advances or significant changes in test equipment in the past year?

o’Day: The trend in the past few years is the introduction of smaller more versatile test devices.

Evans: The use of wireless connectivity, whether it is Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, is probably the change that provides the largest opportunity to affect the way we work. Customers are looking at their smartphones and asking “Why can’t I do this with my test equipment?” Android tablets are providing the platform to implement these services in a relatively low-cost device (iPad and Windows tablets are still too expensive in my view). By using the tablet, both as the user interface to a test instrument and as the wireless communication device, it is not necessary to carry around a tester, a laptop, and, as some others have suggested, an additional training tablet to store reference material. All of the required capabilities can be handled by the one tablet, without the need to transfer information back and forth from tester to laptop to a central PC.

Backes and Barrett: Increased focus on data and test automation. Having access and traceability of test data is becoming increasingly important.

Pyers: In my professional opinion, I have seen more advances in utilizing tablets and Android-based computers. As time becomes less and less for the technician to have access to many machines, selecting an app and going directly into an analysis program is much faster than waiting for a laptop to boot-up.

2. What shifts have you seen in the test equipment market in the past year?

o’Day: Multifunction simulators are becoming more and more popular. This is a shift away from dedicated simulators which only performed a specific task and you would then need an additional simulator to perform a different task.

Evans: Other than our use of the tablet as the test instrument user interface, maybe the integration of multiple test functions into a single test device, above and beyond the traditional multi-parameter ECG simulator. Typically this would combine the ECG simulator, the NIBP simulator and the SPO2 simulator.

Backes and Barrett: For the U.S. market, nervousness on income from government programs impacting strategic planning and budgets.

Pyers: Smaller, compact types of devices that perform many tests are coming to market now. In the past, different tools were needed to analyze a problem where today a single device is all that is needed. Software advances and faster processors help in this time-saving device.

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