PHM in Healthcare

This chapter introduces the trend of healthcare in the United States, and discusses unique features of healthcare devices and specific safety priorities, as well as clinical priorities related to the devices. It describes benefits of prognostics and health management (PHM) and summarizes the need for PHM in the healthcare devices. The chapter discusses considerations of healthcare devices ‐ such as implantable devices and care bots ‐ with the explanation of unique features of the devices. Unlike engineering venues where PHM is used on installed equipment or complex electronic systems, with implantable medical devices, data collection often occurs where “in situ” is consistent with “surgically embedded inside a patient”. The use of fuses and canaries for PHM presents unanswered questions. Enhanced PHM capabilities will allow detection of failures, avoid catastrophic failures, and prevent damage within the human body as well as for the medical devices.