Maintenance of Medical Devices

This study provides an insight view of a currently employed maintenance management system in a general hospital in Australia and highlights some issues. It is hoped that the findings and the proposed solutions prove useful, not only to the institution under study, but also to other healthcare organisations and maintenance providers facing similar problems. The aim of the project was to identify measures that potentially improve maintenance management practice and, when implemented, might thereby contribute to a reduced likelihood of occurrence of maintenance-related incidents with medical devices in a hospital environment. The project was carried out as an embedded case study paired with a literature research on maintenance practices employed in medical device maintenance and in commercial aircraft maintenance. The latter subject area was researched to learn about potentially transferable approaches used in a different industry sector that is also dealing with high intrinsic hazards and high risk.