PUI Audio Medical Buzzers IEC 60601-8 series

With the increased use of medical electronics in medicine today, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) developed the IEC 60601-1-8 standard to regulate alarm signals. The intent of this is to prevent confusion when medical electronics equipment systems are sounding at the same time in the same room.

Previous iterations of the IEC 60601-1-8 standard (IEC 60601-1-8:2006+AMD1:2012) specified melodies for individual alarm conditions in terms of musical notes – e.g., a cardiac alarm system must emit the musical notes “c e g” to alert medical staff of a medium priority alarm condition. In the case of this escalating to a high priority alarm condition, the cardiac alarm system must then emit “c e g – g C” (*91).

However, the IEC has found that the use of these more abstract “musical” alarm signals in noisy clinical environments can be less effective for communicating alarm conditions to medical staff than the use of distinguishable everyday sounds (*92).