Corrective maintenance

Work (physics)

Clinical engineering

Economic growth

Operating system

Risk analysis (engineering)

Computerized maintenance management system

Engineering

Nursing

Performance indicator

Proactive maintenance

Management

Work order

Health care

Economics

Maintenance engineering

Preventive maintenance

Set (abstract data type)

Programming language

Reliability engineering

Operations management

Medical equipment management

Computer science

Planned maintenance

Medical equipment

Process (computing)

Predictive maintenance

Medicine

Mechanical engineering

Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing

Maintenance is a crucial subject in medical equipment life cycle management. Evidence-based maintenance consists of the continuous performance monitoring of equipment, starting from the evidence—the current state in terms of failure history—and improvement of its effectiveness by making the required changes. This process is very important for optimizing the use and allocation of the available resources by clinical engineering departments. Medical equipment maintenance is composed of two basic activities: scheduled maintenance and corrective maintenance. Both are needed for the management of the entire set of medical equipment in a hospital. Because the classification of maintenance service work orders reveals specific issues related to frequent problems and failures, specific codes have been applied to classify the corrective and scheduled maintenance work orders at Careggi University Hospital (Florence, Italy). In this study, a novel set of key performance indicators is also proposed for evaluating medical equipment maintenance performance. The purpose of this research is to combine these two evidence-based methods to assess every aspect of the maintenance process and provide an objective and standardized approach that will support and enhance clinical engineering activities. Starting from the evidence (i.e. failures), the results show that the combination of these two methods can provide a periodical cross-analysis of maintenance performance that indicates the most appropriate procedures.

Evidence-based medical equipment management: a convenient implementation