Monitoring the electromagnetic traffic in an intensive care unit

The paper mainly deals with the effects produced by the electromagnetic fields on the functioning of three patient-monitors in a neonatal intensive care unit. There are investigated both low frequency electric and magnetic fields (related to the operation of an universal motor and of a laptop switching mode power supply) and the electromagnetic fields associated with the GSM 2G 1800 MHz and respective TETRA 400 MHz traffic. It was proposed a protocol for a truthful probation of the disturbing effects produced by a specific electromagnetic field on a particular medical device. There are synthetically presented some alterations produced by certain electromagnetic interferences upon the monitors under test. There are also presented the polar plots of the field strengths for some specific electromagnetic fields measured on the circumference of a 0.5 m radius circle, both the disturber source and the medical device being in the centre.