Maintenance of Medical Devices

The aim of medical equipment maintenance is to inhibit medical device failures or inaccuracies; it’s essentially risk management.

The simplest method is to develop preventive maintenance (PM) schedules strictly based on the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) recommendations, because they state testing steps and recommended testing tools in their service manuals.

This can affect decision making during procurement of test tools. It’s important to realise that references to specific devices are irrelevant if the same technological measurement characteristics exist.

The same applies to alterations of PM procedures. A department can implement their own alternative maintenance schedule, if there is documented evidence that patient care is not adversely affected.

Carefully selected biomedical test tools can lead to improved efficiencies, whilst producing reliable data, mitigating risk, and ensuring medical device quality assurance.