Preventive maintenance

Preventive maintenance is aimed at minimising the probability of failure with variable frequency, depending on the manufacturer's instructions, company risk analysis and actual workloads. The purpose of preventive maintenance is to:

• Ensure the correct functioning of the equipment: an adequate preventive maintenance plan makes it possible to guarantee the functionality and safety of the equipment towards the patient and the user of the same. It allows the incidence of corrective maintenance and the costs associated with interventions to be reduced by replacing spare and wear parts;
• Increase the percentage yield on total operating time: the reduction of corrective interventions makes it possible to reduce downtime and consequently increase the time the equipment is used and its total yield; Increase the level of safety: a careful analysis of risk management, which is analysed in this chapter, allows each piece of equipment to be used in perfect safety, defining the probability of damage occurring and the extent of the damage to the patient and the user of the equipment;
• Optimise repair costs: maintaining equipment in good working order reduces the costs of corrective maintenance work, increases the life expectancy of the medical device and reduces the need to assess plans to renew the technology stock;
• Preventing the occurrence of failures: proper execution of the operations scheduled in the maintenance intervals leads to a much lower failure rate;
• Verify the correspondence of the functionality and calibration parameters with what is indicated by the manufacturer, proceeding with the eventual adaptation and/or reconditioning to standard for those equipment found to be non-compliant;
• Enable the correct use of the equipment in compliance with the operator and patient safety conditions;
• Ensure that the user personnel carry out the correct use of the equipment and perform routine maintenance.