A system dynamics based model for medical equipment maintenance procedure planning in developing countries

Clinical Engineering (CE) department activities include acquisition, maintenance of medical instrumentation, health technology assessment, medical informatics, and risk management. In this work the authors focus on maintenance activities in developing countries where there is a lack of acquisition planning, assessment, budgeting planning, and critical equipment breakdown. In the past decade there has been an explosion in the use of system dynamics modeling in healthcare. In this paper a system dynamics based model for medical equipment maintenance is designed; it incorporates 8 key variables that influence the progress of medical equipment maintenance. This model shows the effect of changing a key variable on the others. This model is intended to maximize the quality and to minimize the cost and time of medical equipment maintenance. This is developed in a causal loop diagram, which is a cause and effect diagram. iThink software has been used in the development of this model, together with vensim in the development of the causal loop diagram. The results show that the critical variables for maintenance are the defect rate, breakdown rate, and maintenance cost. In conclusion the medical equipment maintenance cost determines the decision for acquiring new equipment. The type and number of equipment to be acquired is determined according to the available budget.