The Scientific and Medical Instrumentation Center (SMIC) is the clinical engineering program serving the State University of New York's Health Science Center at Brooklyn. SMIC is a separate department within the center's 354-bed University Hospital, and provides many instrumentation support services for the hospital and the center's Basic Sciences Division. Now in its 24th year, SMIC developed the nation's first mandatory initial checkout program for patient care equipment, and in 1973 published the results of a funded pilot preventive maintenance program; this served as a model for the startup of other PM programs in hospitals across the country and overseas.Today, this 35-person department is primarily responsible for some 7,000 units used in over 60 University Hospital departments and clinics. With its interdisciplinary expertise, SMIC also provides the hospital with many other instrumentation services, including prepurchase evaluation and review, and on-site emergency instrumentation service. SMIC also develops unique devices and instruments for the center's researchers, from the prototype stage through to final construction, and may modify instruments for increased safety and efficacy.