https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/health-professionals/biomedical-engineering-information-health-professionals/

Biomedical engineering information for health professionals

The Biomedical Engineering department (BME) is responsible for managing and maintaining medical equipment within Great Ormond Street Hospital. The department employs 16 staff with a variety of expertise to ensure the smooth running of the department functions, thus supporting the hospital goals.

Our technical staff are members of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM) which guides and promotes the role of the clinical scientist and engineer working within healthcare.

The philosophy of the department is "to reduce device downtime using trained staff with the correct backup to ensure medical devices are maintained in a safe and reliable condition."

The department consists of three areas:

  • electronics and mechanical
  • renal support 
  • intensive care support
These three areas are responsible for supporting the delivery of healthcare by ensuring the availability of safe and effective medical technology in a co-operative effort with other members of the healthcare team within the hospital.

The department applies engineering, technical and managerial expertise to provide safe, effective economical services and equipment as needed by the hospital for patient care, research and community service.

Policy statement

Biomedical engineering supports the hospital's targets:

  • No waste - by efficient management of the hospital's medical equipment assets. 
  • No waits - by ensuring that appropriate technology is available where and when needed.
  • Zero harm - by setting up efficient and well managed processes for the repair and maintenance of medical technology, aiding the procurement of medical technology, and training staff (both internally and externally).
The department strives for continual improvement and measures this in a number of ways.

Quality system

The department is accredited to the BS ISO 9000:2008 Quality Management System (QMS) standard. To keep this accreditation, the department is externally audited by the British Standards Institute twice a year. All aspects of the QMS are also internally audited on a regular basis.

In order to meet this standard, the department operates to a series of documents, processes and procedures ranging from the top level policy statement to specific instructions on how the work of the department is performed. All documents are routinely reviewed to ensure that they reflect our current working practice and that the policy statement is current and relative.

The performance of the system is measured in various ways, the most important of which is feedback from users of our service.