Area of work: Health at DKE

DKE

Health at DKE focuses on healthcare technologies and the related services. Health and technology are tightly interwoven, especially where technology is essential for the success of prevention, diagnostics, therapy and rehabilitation. The boundaries between medical and nursing care and individual healthcare management at home, while out and about and at work are disappearing.

Health at DKE develops security and service-related specifications to protect patients, personnel and other affected persons. This includes all of the technical products used to sustain, improve and restore health, including assistance systems that provide support in daily life. The DKE working area Health also deals with protection against ionizing radiation.

What is the objective of standards and specifications in the field of health(care)?

Medical devices monitor, manipulate and even replace endogenous functions like, for instance, pacemakers. In some cases, a person’s survival or life may depend on the reliable functionality of such a medical device.

But even if medical devices don’t directly intervene in bodily functions, they have to walk the fine line between harm and benefit as is the case with, for instance, x-ray units: they are only intended to scan body parts, but not irradiate them.

Standards and specifications in the field of health mean, in particular, implementing safety- and performance-related specifications to protect patients, staff and private individuals. This already includes the development stage of healthcare technologies and electronic equipment in this sector and extends to testing and certification. Standardization in the field of healthpursues the objective of technology and innovation always being for the benefit of people, not the other way around.

Where do standards and specifications apply in this field and how do we benefit from them?

Healthcare technologies and related services are found in every area of daily life; starting from fitness trackers in the private sector to patient and personnel radiation protection in clinical sector. Wherever an electronic product is used to maintain, improve or restore health, there is also a starting point for standardization in the field of health because electrically operated devices that are electroconductively connected to the body, must be safe.

Regardless of whether at a dermatologist or dentist’s office or in the aesthetics and therapeutics fields, people must be able to rely on the safety of light and laser sources. There, and in many other sectors, standardization is being done in the field of health to sensibly link healthcare, technology, and progress in our daily lives.