Introduction

Department of Biomedical Engineering has been established from the inception of this Hospital. First Hospital governing body formed under the chairmanship of Dr. Sunder Mani Dixit envisaged the need and importance of Biomedical Engineering in this Hospital. As a consequence, this hospital is the first Hospital in Nepal to introduce Biomedical Engineering services with trained manpower in this field. No doubt, the advancement and introduction of latest technologies in health care has definitely increased the quality of services but also increased the burden of health care technology management. In developing country like ours, maintaining equipment is more challenging then procuring a new piece of equipment. Since last two decades, we have been also using latest technologies for the diagnosis and treatment of dreaded disease like Cancer. Despite the limited resource and lacking equipment specific training from equipment manufacturers, we have been able to provide regular and preventive in-house repair maintenance services to make availability of proper functioning, and reliable equipment all the time for the benefit of cancer patients.

Services

The department of Biomedical Engineering operates from 9 AM to 4:30 PM from Sunday to Thursday and up to 2 PM Friday. During office hours, we provide on site repair and maintenance services for the sophisticated equipment which is not possible to repair in the in-house workshop. In case of portal instrument and equipment, the repair and maintenance is generally carried out in the in-house workshop itself and sometimes on site as well. We've been also providing emergency on call services for the critical life saving equipment which needs urgent attention and the equipment installed in the department of radiation oncology which extends their services beyond hospital working hours due to excessive patient load. We also provide periodic preventive maintenance inspection(PMI), calibration and quality audit service to make ensure standards of safety, quality and performance of equipment and their reliability for clinical use. A part form this, we also provide overall management of medical equipment and devices such  as prepare guidelines / procedures. Train subordinates and participate in health and safety initiatives, liaise with local agents / equipment  manufactures as required in order to provide logistics support and make ensure that repair and maintenance is carried out in accordance with the standard procedures, maintain up to date records of all the servicing works carried out, manage inventory of the equipment, conduct in-house training for subordinates and users for effective repair maintenance and proper operation of the equipment, assist management in selection repair and maintenance service provider, prepare annual maintenance contract (AMC) documents in order to enter after sales service contract after the expiry of warranty period, undertake an audit of the service provider to renew the contract, prepare tender documents and specifications for the procurement of new equipment and technical and managerial support as directed by the Hospital managemtn.

Academic Activities :

At present, department of Biomedical Engineering is not involved in any academic/research activities.

Human Resources :

Department of Biomedical Engineering is providing regular and preventive in-house maintenance services with one superintendent biomedical engineer, one biomedical technician and two biomedical helpers.

Volunteers :

Repairing and maintaining equipment is challenging job and we are still under learning process. We are looking for volunteers experienced in radiotherapy equipment repair and maintenance especially Varian medical systems, USA, manufactured Medical Linear Accelerators and their associated equipment. As we have limited resources and expertise in this field, contribution fro within or outside the country for the adoption and transfer of latest maintenance techniques is highly appreciated. If you have further enquires, please feel free to contact Mr. Prakash Pandey, Head of the Biomedical Engineering Department Email prakashpandeybio@hotmail.com