The Technical Point of View

Abstract

There is no doubt that anaesthesia ventilators or infusion pumps should be safe during normal use. As every piece of technical equipment may become faulty, medical equipment may fail too, but even under a first-fault condition it should not create a danger to the patient, the operator or the environment. This means, technically, a well-defined safe state of the equipment, should it differ from normal operation (for example: stopping of an infusion pump, together with optical and acoustical alarms), but this does not mean redundancy, as is necessary for aeroplane engines.