Improving the availability of Australian hospitals’ critical medical devices

Abstract

Maintenance of Australian hospitals’ Critical Medical Devices (CMDs) can be somewhat more demanding than conventional assets from other industries. This is primarily driven by the requirement for CMDs to operate with exceptional levels of reliability. This study proposes a combined Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) and prioritisation maintenance strategy with the objective of improving the availability of CMDs. Reliability functions were used in this study as CMDs exhibit Weibull failure distributions identical to general products. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was chosen as the maintenance prioritisation strategy because of its ability to analyse complex decisions using subjective and objective criteria. An online survey targeted at hospital managers and Biomedical Engineering Technicians (BMET) was developed to determine the priority of Preventive Maintenance (PM) activities for certain CMD and propose a range of optimal PM intervals for a variety of reliabilities. Results from the prioritisation study have shown that the external environmental effects from COVID-19 had significantly increased the priority for PM of ventilators over other CMDs. Ventilator manufacturers recommend conducting PM once over 12 months or every 5000 hours of operation. The proposed study has revealed that the PM of ventilators can be scheduled once every 14 months to obtain reliabilities close to 100%. Similar outcomes were observed for other CMDs as well. The aftermath of this study will ensure better availability of CMDs, as well as will help to alleviate complications with PM scheduling for managers and BMET departments.