Investment in biomedical device test equipment calibration services is delivering benefits for an East Midlands NHS hospital trust.
The University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, founded in 2000, is one of the six largest NHS trusts in England with over 12,000 staff who treat in excess of one million patients per annum across three sites: Leicester Royal Infirmary, Glendale Hospital and Leicester General Hospital.
The organisation has used the expertise of Calibrationhouse for more than 10 years to undertake the calibration of hundreds of items of specialist medical electrical test equipment. These include Rigel Medical and Fluke Biomedical manufactured defibrillation analysers, patient simulators and ventilator testers as part of a well-established programme of calibration of a wide range of test equipment.
The service, which features access to a team of skilled engineers operating from a fleet of technical vehicles, sees the provision of specialist UKAS calibration services deployed onsite at the Leicester hospitals, supported by state-of-the-art laboratory facilities in County Durham.
As part of an ongoing contract, engineers have recently completed the calibration of 170 units on site at the three hospitals in under five days. This work provides the NHS Trust with significant equipment service and maintenance cost savings on the back of a high-quality industry standard compliant service.
Many medical device testers such as those used on defibrillators, ECGs, blood pressure monitors and electrical circuits are tested on site. Additionally, dozens of items used to check infusion pumps, ventilators and anaesthetic machines, which are unable to be calibrated onsite, are sent to Calibrationhouse’s laboratory at Peterlee. They all undergo extensive checks during calibration checking by engineers and are quickly returned to service.
The move ensures the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust is compliant with MHRA (the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) regulations for medical device test equipment, and ISO17025:2017, which covers general requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories.
The Trust’s medical physics technician and calibration lead Ian Collier, whose responsibilities include overseeing annual equipment inspections, testing and calibration, said Calibrationhouse is one of the fastest, most comprehensive, and cost-effective precision instrumentation services available in the UK.
He added: “The ability to carry out onsite calibration is really beneficial to our activities and the wider NHS Trust, meeting the requirements of a busy hospital environment, where resources and equipment must be readily available and performing to optimum levels at all times.
“Indeed, over many years the service has continued to meet and exceed our needs, saving us a small fortune in service and maintenance costs. Moreover, it allows me to spend less time on managing calibration procedures and more time on other areas of operations.
“Calibrationhouse’s service is really good. It’s reliable and flexible enough to accommodate a vast array of demand and tester types while allowing us to send any number of testers at one time to its County Durham lab. It’s also flexible enough to accommodate any unscheduled or unforeseen changes in the type of instruments that they are expecting to calibrate.”
The University Hospitals of Leicester is one of many of the UK’s NHS Trusts to benefit from access to Calibrationhouse’s expertise and a broad range of test, measurement and analysis equipment. The company has a track record of working with leading test instrumentation brands who include Fluke, Seaward, Megger, Keysight, Agilent, and specialist electromedical equipment suppliers such as Rigel, Fluke Biomedical, B.C Group, Pronk Technologies and others.
Accredited to ISO9001:2015 and ISO17025:2017‚ Calibrationhouse has invested in a wide range of calibration equipment, facilities and an on-site calibration team to offer a broad range of services.
