Focus on: Boston City Hospital Department of Clinical Engineering.

This paper describes the Clinical Engineering Department at the Boston City Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. Boston City Hospital is the largest component of the City of Boston's Department of Health and Hospitals. The Clinical Engineering Department maintains in excess of 2,700 devices located at Boston City Hospital, Long Island Hospital, Mattapan Chronic Disease Hospital, and three neighborhood health centers that operate under the License of the Department of Health and Hospitals. The Clinical Engineering Department is responsible for the management, repair, testing, calibration, modification, and installation of medical equipment at each of the facilities. The department is also active in the training of clinical and professional staff members, and participates in anesthesia and laser research.

A real-time anesthesia record keeping system using video.

A real-time, Automated Anesthesia Record Keeping (AARK) system was constructed using commercially available video hardware. This system can acquire all of the information that is presented visually to an anesthesiologist directly from monitor screens. The information is recorded on VHS format tape. Use of such a system avoids the need for digital processing while capturing all waveforms, trends, data messages and numerics. Since the data are stored directly to tape, subsequent data analysis can be accomplished. This system can be used with virtually any medical monitor.

The use of video in anesthesia record keeping.

Although formal comparisons of record keeping systems are difficult, the authors are persuaded that a video system provides substantial advantages over AARK in several (though not all) of its aims and at a substantially reduced cost. The video system might be viewed as a parallel rather than a replacement system in some cases. The authors have been struck by certain capabilities such a video system offers. Not the least of these is the advantage of having a multiple OR monitoring system for use by the floor supervisor to check all rooms easily. The implications of a video technology in clinical research also are important. At present, a clinical trial involving 40 cases is being organized and will require that physiologic parameters be recorded in detail. Plans to use the ubiquitous multichannel strip recorder for logging the parameters have been changed. Video will be used instead, since it is more than adequate to meet most research needs of the department and greatly simplifies the recording of such data at reduced cost.