Today, ‘Hospital engineering’ is an important branch of hospital management. Biomedical, Operation and Maintenance Engineers of any Hospital have a vital role in ensuring maximum equipment utilisation and minimum downtime.
Hospital equipment fall into an extremely wide spectrum ranging right from a hi-tech MRI and CT scanner to a simple patient trolley. Yet hospital equipment can be broadly classified into:
- Biomedical equipment
- Laboratory equipment
- Ward equipment
- Service support equipment
- Utilities and hospital furniture
All these account for a major part of any hospital project cost, which could go upto almost 60 per cent. Of this, biomedical equipment could account for nearly 50 per cent of the cost. Keeping this in view it is essential to ensure maximum utilisation of the equipment with minimum downtime.
Thus maintenance is an extremely important work schedule that is required to keep any plant and machinery in a near original state of functioning for as long a period of time as possible. This is different from repairs, which is the restoration of such an asset to a condition as close to its original, by replacements of parts and overhauling of the asset.
Maintenance management program has a very definite and clear objective. This is meant to minimise repairs allowing for maximum uptime/ use of the system, at minimum maintenance cost. It is essential to maintain a detailed history of the system with the objective of improving maintenance and cost performance and to maintain records enabling evaluation of the efficiency of the system, cost of maintenance, cost of repairs/ replacements. One must aim to reduce the probabilities of sudden breakdowns and unplanned writing off of the asset.
