Today's complex biomedical equipment is the result of advances in three different areas of engineering and scientific research. The first, of course, is our ever-increasing knowledge of the human body and of the disease processes that afflict it. Although the body of medical knowledge has been expanding for thousands of years, most of the discoveries leading to the development of medical technology have occurred during the last 300 years. During the past 100 years especially, we have learned a great deal about the chemical and electrical nature of the human body.
The second contribution to biomedical technology's development is the field of instrumentation—the design and building of precision measuring devices. Throughout the history of medicine, physicians and medical researchers have tried to learn about and to monitor the workings of the human body with whatever instruments were available to them. However, it was not until the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries that instruments were developed that could detect the human body's many subtle and rapid processes.
The third area is mechanization and automation. Biomedical equipment often relies on mechanisms, such as pumps, motors, bellows, control arms, etc. These kinds of equipment were initially developed and improved during the Industrial Revolution; however, it was not until the 1950s that the field of medical technology began incorporating the use of automation. During the 1950s, researchers developed machines for analyzing the various components of blood and for preparing tissue specimens for microscopic examination. Probably the most dramatic development of this period was the introduction of the heart-lung machine by Dr. John Heysham Gibbon of Philadelphia in 1953, a project he had been working on since the 1930s.
Since the 1950s, there has been dramatic growth in the field of biomedical technology. Fifty years ago, even the most advanced hospitals had only a few pieces of electronic medical equipment; today such hospitals have thousands. And, to service this equipment, the biomedical equipment technician has become an important member of the health care delivery team.
In a sense, biomedical equipment technicians represent the newest stage in the history of technicians. The first technicians were skilled assistants who had learned a trade and gone to work for an engineer or scientist. The second generation learned a technology, such as electronics. The most recent generation of technicians needs integrated instruction and competence in at least two fields of science and technology (including software). For the biomedical equipment technician, the fields may vary, but they will most often be electronics and human physiology.
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