Medical Equipment is a core asset for any healthcare facility. To ensure medical equipment is safe and effective there is a need to understand its associated management methodology. Consequently, a typical life cycle approach for medical equipment management is identified and explained in terms of processes and applications.
Medical equipment plays an important role in healthcare delivery. It ranges from small and simple devices such as sphygmomanometer to complex and big devices. It is, therefore, of vital importance that healthcare organisations manage their assets to keep their expenditures under control as well as ensure the quality of healthcare delivery.
Medical Equipment Management (MEM) takes place within the context of human, material, structural, organisational, and financial resources. It is a process which helps hospitals to develop, monitor, and manage their equipment to promote the safe, effective, and economical use and maintenance of equipment. Responsible organisations should setup and regularly review MEM to ensure that a suitable medical device is used in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions, maintained in a safe and reliable condition, and disposed appropriately at the end of its useful life.
A systematic way to manage medical equipment is to study and optimise all phases in the useful life of that equipment. A typical life cycle approach that was originally developed for major medical equipment, also applies to non-major but essential medical devices and may be extended to additional devices. It is a logical sequence of medical equipment management activities or stages, and each stage is dependent on and linked with other activities