Prioritization of medical equipment for maintenance decisions

• Published in: The Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 62; no. 9; pp. 1666 - 1687
• Main Authors: Taghipour, S, Banjevic, D, Jardine, A K S
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Taylor & Francis 01.09.2011; Palgrave Macmillan; Palgrave Macmillan UK; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: AHP; Applied sciences; Business and Management; criticality prioritization; Decision making; Decision theory. Utility theory; Exact sciences and technology; Failure; Failure modes; Health hazards; Hierarchies; Hospitals; Industrial metrology. Testing; Maintenance; Maintenance costs; maintenance decisions; Maintenance management; Management; MCDM; Mechanical engineering. Machine design; medical devices; Medical equipment; Multiple criteria decision making; Operational research and scientific management; Operational research. Management science; Operations research; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Preventive maintenance; Prioritization; risk; Studies; Term weighting; Theoretical Paper; Theoretical Papers; User training; hospitals; medical devices; AHP; maintenance decisions; risk; MCDM; criticality prioritization; Medical equipment; Multicriteria analysis; Decision making; Priority; Hospital management; Analytic hierarchy process; Rupture; Maintenance equipment; Failures; Modeling; Preventive maintenance; Optimal strategy; User training; System maintenance; Hospital; Medical application; Criticality
• ISSN: 0160-5682; 1476-9360
• DOI: 10.1057/jors.2010.106

Clinical engineering departments in hospitals are responsible for establishing and regulating a Medical Equipment Management Program to ensure that medical devices are safe and reliable. In order to mitigate functional failures, significant and critical devices should be identified and prioritized. In this paper, we present a multi-criteria decision-making model to prioritize medical devices according to their criticality. Devices with lower criticality scores can be assigned a lower priority in a maintenance management program. However, those with higher scores should be investigated in detail to find the reasons for their higher criticality, and appropriate actions, such as 'preventive maintenance', 'user training', 'redesigning the device', etc, should be taken. In this paper,we also describe how individual score values obtained for each criterion can be used to establish guidelines for appropriate maintenance strategies for different classes of devices. The information of 26 different medical devices is extracted from a hospital's maintenance management system to illustrate an application of the proposed model.