Power fluctuations and failures are one of the biggest concerns for diagnostic imaging equipment as they make them susceptible to temporary or permanent damage. Such equipment works in a very specific power range and has very fine calibration tolerances.

So, when any power quality disturbance or issue takes place, medical facilities experience reliability issues, decreased productivity, downtime, and frustrated staff and patients. This equipment includes expensive parts like tubes, connectors, boards, and others that can burn a hole in your pocket on their replacement.

However, to save your expensive diagnostic imaging equipment from any uninvited power issues, you need to be acquainted with all the possible problems that can come your way. So, to educate you on the various power issues and how they affect your imaging equipment, we have crafted an informative article for you.

Read on.

Common power problems affecting diagnostic imaging equipment

There are some common power disturbances that you need to be cautious of for your equipment. Some of them are listed below.

• Flicker: It is a momentary outage of power that lasts less than 60 seconds. It can shut down medical equipment completely at your facility. In such a case, your equipment requires a proper shut down or resetting. It usually occurs in situations like when a tree branch touches a power line, or a construction accident disrupts a power line.
• Surge: It refers to a momentary increase in voltage caused by unexpected burdens on the electrical system. You can also experience such issues when a high-power demand device is turned off and the surplus voltage gets dissipated in the power line. It often increases the amount of electricity in the power lines. It causes premature failure and surges of stress in delicate components.
• Spike: It is a roaring increase in voltage that lasts for microseconds caused by power coming back on after an outage or by lightning. Spike can lead to premature equipment failure.
• Sag: It is a rapid, short-term dip in voltage caused by high power demand simultaneously by many electrical devices. It decreases the life span and efficiency of equipment.
• Noise: In the smooth flow of electricity, noise is an electromagnetic interference or radio frequency interference. It can affect the performance of your equipment by introducing glitches and errors into data files and software programs.
• Outage: Also called a blackout, it refers to a total power loss for a prolonged time. It often leads to unexpected data loss and the shutting down of all types of diagnostic imaging equipment.

We’ll move on to learn about their effects so that you can identify their causes now that you are well informed of the common power problems that can damage your radiology imaging equipment.

Impacts of power issues on diagnostic imaging equipment

1. Loss of patient data

The loss of the patient data may sound like just an inconvenience, but it is more of a revenue loss for you. You will lose access to all the previous scans of the patients on whom current treatment is going on or is yet to be started.

In such a case, you must either request that your patients take those tests again for a fee or deal with the compensation that must be provided to the patients for your irresponsibility.

This way, you are not only showcasing unintended irresponsible behavior to your patients but also losing tonnes of patients because of the uninvited technical glitch.

2. Decreased equipment performance

Frequent power losses have a dramatic impact on the performance of equipment. The instant shut down of working diagnostic imaging equipment often hinders the everyday operations at a medical facility. It may need resetting or carrying out scans from the beginning in case you haven’t saved the data.

Frequent and improper shutdown of the equipment thus affects its performance and uptime. This results in not only frustrating the staff but also the patients with the waiting time at the facility.

3. Permanent equipment damage

Many times, because of the power surge, the medical imaging equipment experienced a high amount of electricity running through it. In such a case, the equipment is unable to sustain the huge power flowing through it and collapses.

Sometimes it may damage only some parts of the diagnostic imaging equipment. On the other hand, if the damage is brutal, the whole equipment is unable to sustain the huge power flowing through it and collapses.

Conclusion

These are some of the common consequences experienced by medical imaging equipment because of the power issues. If you wish to seek protection from such power problems, you need to come up with a reliable solution for them.

Connect with our specialists to get help creating a completely power-proof environment if you’re lost and unsure of where to begin. With this, you can be prepared for any forthcoming power issues for your diagnostic imaging equipment.

We are pioneers in selling pre-owned and refurbished medical imaging equipment from reputed OEMs like Toshiba, Philips, Siemens, GE, and more. We can help you to select the best medical equipment for your healthcare facility and help you to protect your investment and provide options for saving maintenance and service costs on your pre-owned or refurbished medical equipment.

To get further information, please feel free to call us at +1 586 917 0245 or email us at sales@kbdentalconsulting.com.