The biomedical equipment market includes all devices and machines for the patient diagnosis and therapy, and represents a considerable amount of the Italian medical expenses (about 6 Mld of Euro per year). In fact, the amount of money required for purchasing biomedical equipment represents about 15-20% of the total expenses of a hospital, either public or private. In addition, due to the biomedical equipment technological obsolescence, its amortization period (4-12 years) is definitely lower than that of plants (10-30 years) or buildings (40-100 years).
However, to a such extended expenses corresponds an alarming situation: a survey effected by the category Associations during 2004 indicates that 50% of the devices considered in the study (about 18.500 equipments in use in over 850 public hospitals) could suddenly stop working because outdated.
In a context characterized by lack of economic funds, pressing rules and a constant offer of new products on the market, the difficulty of managing these equipments is easily understood.
In fact, the development of a sanitary system depends on the ability to manage the entry of innovating devices into clinical practice, in accordance with standards that assure positive results in terms of health and care, financial bearableness, equity and integration of intervention.
For a medical service is essential to: use innovative models to accurately determine which device needs to be replaced and/or purchased;avoid waste of money; always maintain technological devices to a level adequate to the services to be provided.
Among those devices that need to be replaced, particularly important are those that are still working and do not need to be substituted immediately, but that have progressively to be replaced since not optimal in terms technical and operative parameters. The systematic identification of such equipments is called of Plane of Renewal.
From a collaboration between the Electromagnetism and Bioengineering Department of Polytechnic University of Marche and the Clinical Engineering Division of the Elettronica Bio Medicale (EBM) srl of Foligno (PG), established for a doctoral research, derives a project finalized to offer an innovative support to the Direction of public and private Health Services in defining planes of renewal.
The new planning method, called Semplicitas Method, is based on a mathematical algorithm that associates a numerical index, called Index of Renewal Critic (IRC), to each device. IRC provides a measurement of the replacement priority of the considered device with respect to the whole medical equipment of the analyzed structure.
The IRC is calculated from accurate and efficacious evaluations of technical, economic and clinical parameters. In fact it is computed as weighed mean of 3 innovative partial indexes: Index of Technology Critic (ITC), Index of Clinical Critic (ICC), and Index of Economic-
Management Critic (IEMC). These indexes are calculated as weighed mean of appropriate technical, clinical and economic-management parameters respectively.
In order to warrant the maximum analysis' strictness and objectiveness and to provide concreteness to the mathematical model, an innovating informatics tool, called Sfinge, was designed.
The Semplicitas Model validation test, together with its informatics application Sfinge, was performed at the Umbria Local Sanitary Unit N°2, where the Elettronica Bio Medicale s.r.l.
has managed the Clinical Engineering Service for the last 10 years. The obtained results were in agreement with the findings of the EBM's technicians. Consequently, we can conclude that the mathematical model satisfies the design requirements, and can be used as support when designing a Plane of Renewal. Moreover, its software application was found to be simple and intuitive to use, as well as of immediate applicability.
The final feedback has been positive, and the customers were satisfied of both quality of obtained results and achievement time, that resulted to be significantly shorter that what required for the not-computerized, traditionally used, planning activity.
Given the obtained encouraging results, the company Elettronica Bio Medicale has decided to make a web-based version of Sfinge, constantly undergoing critical revision, also in terms of optimal parameters to be used.
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