Standards about Medical Equipment Maintenance – A Survey

With the exception of some countries, average life expectancy has been increasing globally. At European level, the combined effects of declining birth rate and increased life expectancy have resulted in an aging population. According to the National Statistics Institute, Portugal follows this trend closely [1]. Since health care needs are higher in senior age brackets, a corresponding growth in demand for this type of services can be expected. From the perspective of hospital management, health-care equipment maintenance activities should aim at ensuring operational quality of service and be seamlessly integrated with institutional processes, with the objective of minimizing operational costs. In turn, the adoption of adequate maintenance procedures is necessary for achieving equipment reliability, in particular through the application of standards, which ensure compliance to operation specifications. In this paper, a survey is made about some of the main international standards that apply to hospital maintenance. This topic is extremely important, not only for the maintenance professionals, but also for I&D purposes and for those who design, develop and certify biomedical equipment. This work is the result of a collaborative effort between the Superior Institute of Engineering of Coimbra and University Hospitals of Coimbra, in the context of a Thesis of the Biomedical Instrumentation Master Course.