Medical Device Management

Medical Device Management is the process that healthcare organisations use to manage medical devices through their lifecycle, from procurement to disposal. Effective management of these devices is essential to ensure patient safety and quality care.

What is Medical Device Management?

Medical device management is a critical component of healthcare, involving a range of processes and activities that relate to the procurement, planning, maintenance, and disposal of medical devices. The primary purpose of medical device management is to ensure that these devices are available, safe, and effective when required to support patient care and safety.

By managing medical devices effectively, organisations can ensure that these devices are functioning appropriately, that their quality is maintained, and that they are replaced as needed. To achieve this, healthcare organisations should have a process to management and control inventory, risk management, and procedures to facilitate training of staff. The process will ensure that incidents or adverse events related to the device are reported and addressed as appropriate.

To implement effective medical device management, organisations must have a comprehensive strategy that covers all aspects of the device lifecycle. This includes identifying and selecting appropriate devices, establishing policies and procedures for their use, training staff on their use, and ensuring that they are appropriately maintained. Additionally, healthcare organisations must have systems in place to monitor and evaluate the performance of medical devices and to track incidents or adverse events related to their use.

Why is Medical Device Management Important?

Medical devices are essential in ensuring that patients receive high quality care. Devices such as ventilators, infusion pumps, and monitors play a vital role in patient care. Effective management of these devices ensures that they are safe and effective, reducing the risk of harm to patients. By maintaining devices appropriately and tracking their usage and performance, organisations can identify and address issues early, reducing the likelihood of incidents occurring.

Medical device management is also critical in reducing healthcare costs. By implementing effective management strategies, organisations can reduce the risk of equipment downtime, which can lead to delays in patient care and increased costs.

Proper maintenance and disposal of devices can also reduce the need for replacement or repairs, saving on the costs associated with purchasing new devices or repairing existing ones. Proper management of medical devices can also help healthcare organisations to identify opportunities for improvement and streamline their device inventory, reducing unnecessary spending on devices that are not needed. 

6 Key Challenges of Medical Device Management

Management of medical devices requires healthcare organisations to address multiple challenges, including:

1. Equipment Maintenance: Regular maintenance is necessary to ensure that devices are functioning correctly and to prevent breakdowns that could impact patient care. Managing maintenance schedules, tracking maintenance records, and ensuring that maintenance is carried out in a timely manner can be challenging.
2. Device Procurement: Selecting and purchasing the right medical devices can be a challenge, particularly for organisations that lack the necessary expertise in device selection. Healthcare organisations must ensure that devices meet their needs and are cost-effective.
3. User Training: Ensuring that staff members receive adequate training to use medical devices effectively can be a challenge. Training programs can be time-consuming and costly, but proper training is essential to prevent errors that could negatively impact patient safety.
4. Device Management: Medical device management can be challenging, particularly for organisations that have large numbers of devices. Effective management requires accurate tracking of device usage and the availability of devices to meet both the patient needs and needs within the healthcare organisation.
5. Risk Management: Medical devices can pose risks to patients if they are not used correctly or if they malfunction. Healthcare organisations must implement effective risk management strategies to mitigate these risks.
6. Regulatory Compliance: Healthcare organisations must ensure that their devices meet all applicable regulatory requirements and standards to ensure patient safety.

Benefits of Leveraging Technology to Address these Challenges

Software can play a critical role in addressing the challenges within medical device management. Here are some ways in which software can help healthcare organisations manage medical devices more effectively:

1. Equipment Maintenance: Software can automate the maintenance management process by tracking equipment maintenance schedules and generating alerts when maintenance is due. This can reduce the risk of equipment failure and downtime.
2. Device Procurement: Software can provide decision support tools to help organisations select the right medical devices for their needs. This can reduce the risk of purchasing devices that are not needed or do not meet the organisation’s requirements. Procurement is a large expenditure for healthcare organisations with high complexity. You can read more about procurement in healthcare here.
3. User Training: Staff members need to be trained on how to use medical devices effectively. Software can enable healthcare organisations to easily document staff qualifications.
4. Inventory Control: Software can track the inventory of medical devices, providing information about the location and status of devices. This can reduce the risk of overstocking or understocking different departments and across multiple hospital facilities.
5. Risk Management: Software can help by providing risk assessment tools that allow organisations to identify and manage potential risks related to their medical devices.
6. Regulatory Compliance: Software can provide tools to help organisations ensure that their devices are in compliance with regulations and standards such as Global Medical Device Nomenclature (GMDN), European Database on Medical Devices (EUDAMED), European Medical Device Regulation (MDR), Unique Device Identification (UDI), and Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

Functionality of Medical Device Management Solutions

The functionality of medical device management solutions can vary depending on the specific product or vendor, but in general, these solutions are designed to provide a comprehensive system for tracking and managing the equipment, supplies, and other physical assets used in healthcare organisations.

As functionality can differ between software solutions, we will mention common features within Medusa enterprise asset management (EAM) solution that are used across hundreds of healthcare organisations:

1. Asset Registry & Management. This is the most fundamental feature. Medical device management software contains all medical device related information: manufacturer, model, class, type, codes, associated costs, location, downtime, documentation, and more that fits the organisation’s needs.
2. Work Orders (WO). This is related to device management as a whole. Work orders, in simple terms, are tasks related to medical devices: description, priority, type of work need, supply need, and assigned personnel.
3. Preventive Maintenance (PM). A large majority of medical devices have recurring maintenance scheduled to ensure the device is in a healthy state. The amount of time the recurring maintenance is based on manufacturer recommendations and effects on patient safety.
4. Reporting and Analysis. Enables healthcare organisations to make a data-driven decision basis. Providing reports of medical device activities through dashboards and directly email them to the appropriate recipient.
5. Competence Management. Enables healthcare organisations to keep track and document training, certificates, education, and roles for all personnel.
6. Finance. Enables support accounting activities such as recurring invoicing.
7. Contract Management. Managing hundreds of contracts can be challenging for many healthcare organisations. Contract management features can ease this workload.
8. Integration. Can be integrated into a wide range of third-party software solutions. Medusa has integrations standardised, ensuring data security, and reducing costs.

Simply speaking, medical device management software solutions are designed to provide healthcare organisations right tools and information they need to effectively track and manage their medical devices.

Summary

Medical device management plays a crucial role in ensuring that medical devices are safe, effective, and available to support patient care. However, managing medical devices can be challenging, with various obstacles to overcome, such as equipment maintenance, device procurement, user training, device upgrades, inventory control, risk management, regulatory compliance, and disposal.

Software solutions, such as Medusa EAM, can help healthcare organisations manage medical devices more effectively by automating processes, providing decision support tools, and facilitating information sharing. By leveraging a software solution, healthcare organisations can streamline their medical device management processes and ultimately sustain high quality patient care and safety.

Effective medical device management is essential in ensuring the safety and quality of patient care. By addressing the challenges that come with managing medical devices and leveraging software solutions, healthcare organisations can provide the best possible care to their patients while reducing costs and improving operational efficiency.

Is your organisation looking for a comprehensive and cost-effective solution to manage medical devices?