Imagine that you work for a company that makes instrumentati

Imagine that you work for a company that makes instrumentation amplifiers for medical equipment. The customer on a new project has asked for a change in the sensor circuitry that lowers the resistance between the sensor and the amplifier circuit. The nature of the sensor requires that it be operated at a high voltage, so the impact of lowering the resistance in the interface means a higher current flowing through the sensor.

As the lead engineer on the project, you object to this request, explaining that you believe the safety of the patient will be impacted by this requested design change. You boss disagrees and orders you to go ahead with the redesign.

What do you do? What professional, social, and ethical considerations come into play as you decide on a course of action? How do you imagine your decision may affect the relationships with other individuals on the design team?

Solution

First of all, lowering the resistance if the circuitry between amplifier circuit and sensor results in higher flow of current, which in turn, may result in problems , such as Heating of the equipment( Heat = i*r*r,where r is resistance of material of wire and not the resistance mentioned), more power consumption( total power consumed= power consumed by the equipment+ heat energy generated) and also safety concerns regarding the patient( high heat generation may cause even fire).
Medical equipments should be manufactured according to strict safety regulation.
The approach of this problem requires that the problems stated above are satisfactorily solved, and the customer is satisfied.
The correct approach may be, changing the internal impedance of the amplifier circuit , so that the output itself results in lower current output than before. Thus, as per the customer\'s design , if we do reduce the resistance between the amplifier circuit and the sensor circuit, this will result in higher current, but the amplifier output this time will be lower than the previous one, which means, the net current flow is less than the previous case. Thus,we follow the customer\'s design, and also check the safety and power concerns. But this may be considered ethically wrong as we are altering the amplifier\'s specifications. But, as a designer of medical equipment, safety should be our primary concern. As our team members apparently consists of professionals engineers and designers, all of them would be already aware of the fault in the customer\'s design.
In other case, if the customer is not worried about power usage and as designers, we find that the change in design is not endangering the safety of patient, the design may be considered by making some minor changes.
Finally, if the customer\'s design is too dangerous to be adapted, but he is adamant on his design, as professionals , we have to try to make him understand the subtle danger involved in the designed, by showing him presentations and explaining the faulty design. If disagreement occurs, we will continue with his design by altering the values. This may be ethically incorrect, but we repeat, safety is our primary concern