Implementation of a Medical Equipment Inventory at a Regional Healthcare System in Greece

Abstract

Modern medicine is highly dependent on recent developments in new diagnostic and therapeutic methods, techniques and equipment. An inventory of all existing medical equipment is essential to have a clear picture of the technology in use. INBIT undertook a project to create a regional-wide medical equipment inventory of all 85 medical centers belonging to the of the 2nd Regional Health Authority (RHA), most of them at Aegean Sea islands. Since the validity of the final project’s results mostly depends on data integrity and uniformity, two points are very critical: the methodology of registration and the use of correct codification and nomenclature. To this scope, parameters such as resources, inventory protocol, codification, and uniformity of the data, along with the adequate software tools to be used were designed and planned. Data to register included the manufacturer, model, serial number, medical device (MD) group, year of put in service, way of procurement, place that it is used/installed etc. A working team of nine biomedical engineers was formed with a specific and clear protocol on the procedure to be followed, with emphasis on the assignment of each device to the correct MD group. Additionally, given that equipment can be found anywhere in the medical centers, the cooperation of the healthcare staff was very crucial. Finally, since the inventory is dynamic, the establishment of update procedures has been designed and prepared and local staff was trained to keep up the inventory alive. The results were delivered to each healthcare unit and to the RHA authorities in an electronic form and uploaded to the web-Praxis medical equipment management system (MEMS), ready for implementation after user training.