Abstract
Hemodialysis machines are critical medical equipment in healthcare facilities for renal replacement therapy in form of dialysis treatment on solving chronic kidney diseases in Sub Sahara Africa. It is a vital machine which acts as human kidney by incorporating electromechanical controlled extracorporeal blood paths that leverage pumps and semi permeable dialyzer membranes to filter the patient’s blood. The biggest challenge to the biomedical engineers in most African hospitals is to maintain the manufacturer’s safety and performance specification of the haemodialysis equipment. There is a need for effective maintenance strategy for haemodialysis medical equipment in order to maintain the manufacturer’s set specification to meet clinical expectations and hence improve its reliability. The overall goal of the research paper is therefore to analyze the influence of different maintenance strategies and subsequently improve on the reliability of hemodialysis equipment in healthcare institutions in Kenya. The research will prioritize hemodialysis machine as critical medical equipment and use comprehensive secondary data to review and analyze the strategic maintenance applied in health institutions to optimize the best and cost effective strategic maintenance for the hemodialysis medical equipment. The ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms may be less expert reliant and avoid uncertainty and ambiguity to determine the best strategic maintenance management to manage hemodialysis medical equipment in the hospitals. The results will provide an opportunity to technical engineers to develop a predictive and intelligent management system in the hospitals to minimize or remove the Mean Downtime (MDT) and Mean time to repair (MTTR) for a failed hemodialysis machines and improve the reliability of the hemodialysis machine.
Highlights
Hemodialysis machines are sensitive electromechanical systems used in the hospitals
There is a need for effective maintenance strategy for hemodialysis machines as critical medical equipment in Kenya healthcare in order to maintain the medical equipment in manufacturers set specification and clinical requirement
The review on strategic maintenance practices provides a platform for researchers in biomedical engineering field, an opportunity to develop a more sophisticated systems to handle challenges in the maintenance management
Summary
Hemodialysis machines are sensitive electromechanical systems used in the hospitals. Their sensitivity increases the adverse effects that may occur in case the machines fails their primary function as life support. The removal of renal fluid from a kidney patient is crucial to easy and employ comfort to the patient This would be attained by a pressure gradient applied across the dialyzer which is in direct contact with blood [1, 2]. The peristaltic pump is a positive displacement pump, which is commonly used in dialysis machines [3] It has several disadvantages which affects its performance and efficiency in the dialysis machines. Common factors related to haemodialysis machine maintenance include low blood pump and dialysate flow rates, under estimates of flow due to calibration errors and blood pump tubing collapse [5].
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