DYNAMIC MODEL FOR EVALUATION OF MEDICAL DEVICES MAINTENANCE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Abstract

Keywords: Maintenance Policies, Medical Devices, Statistical Analysis, System Dynamics Summary: Proper maintenance management policies can reduce overall medical device operation cost, decrease degradation and increase availability. This paper presents a system dynamics simulation model that was designed to evaluate the initiative contributions of preventive and corrective maintenance towards improving the overall performance of medical devices in developing countries. The study suggests better maintenance policies for achieving higher availability and lower degradation. Simulation results show that maintenance management could reduce corrective maintenance levels by increasing preventive maintenance level, therefore increasing medical device availability and reducing maintenance cost. The statistical analysis of the simulation results demonstrates that there is a significant improvement in the performance of medical devices with reduction in workload, and periodic preventive maintenance.