As a leading global provider of OEM NIBP technologies, we work very closely with various medical device manufacturers and biomedical engineering departments as they apply oscillometric NIBP simulators to assist with their device development or equipment maintenance efforts.
When using NIBP simulators, it is extremely important to understand the challenges and potential pitfalls that can affect your results. Of particular importance is to remember simulators are excellent measures of device repeatability and agreement, however simulators should never be considered a standard of accuracy. Accuracy should only be measured by comparisons to manual measurement on human subjects such as required by the FDA in the AAMI-SP10 standard. SunTech Medical has attempted to address some of these issues for our customers in the white paper "NIBP Simulator Limits with the Advantage OEM NIBP Module Series."
As another reference, I recently discovered a very informative article by Karl Ruiter from Pronk Technologies, Inc. that highlights some critical considerations for getting the best results with any oscillometric NIBP simulator. In summary, they are:
• One should be aware of the difference between static and dynamic accuracy. This serves to reinforce that accuracy of an NIBP device is best measured by comparison to manual readings on patients rather than with a simulator.
• One should expect different NIBP devices to give different results on simulators, in fact, sometimes dramatic differences.
• There are multiple sources of error for oscillometric simulation. The author gives a detailed explanation of some of the most prevalent.
• Appropriate technique and setup is absolutely essential to achieve the best possible simulation results.
You can read the full article and download a PDF version by visiting the Pronk Technologies website here (http://pronktech.com/optimizingresults.html). If you have any feedback on the article from Pronk Technologies, the white paper from SunTech Medical or wish to share your experiences with NIBP simulators, we'd love to hear them!