Ottawa - Carleton Institute of Biomedical Engineering: Clinical Engineering Topics

Presenters: Eduardo Alcala, Lama Yassin-Kassab, Chris Gray

Overview: In coordination with the Ottawa-Carleton Institute of Biomedical Engineering (OCIBME) Directors and Academic Supervisors, CMBES is very proud to present the accomplished works of three M.Eng. students on various Clinical Engineering topics.

Abstracts:

Ottawa Heart Institute Research Corporation (OHIRC) Technology Management Program: This presentation summarizes the development of a new management program for research equipment which will oversee the inventory, documentation, schedule and unscheduled maintenance, initial inspection, contract management, equipment procurement, decommission, and research grant application assistance. The workflows, processes, and tools presented, aligns with pre-existing processes in the Biomedical Engineering (BME) department supporting the clinical University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI). The strategy has been slowly integrated, and it is currently under analysis to identify efficiencies and fulfill researchers' needs. Through the expertise of the Biomedical and Clinical Engineering departments, this work presents a novel strategy to manage research equipment within a health care facility.

Presenter: Eduardo Alcala - University of Ottawa Heart Institiute (Supervised by Timothy Zakutney and Stephanie Liddle)

Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Preventive Maintenance Procedure of the Alaris Infusion Pump Controllers 8105 at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario: Medical equipment maintenance has been planned and carried out for over 40 years and most clinical engineering departments follow the recommended manufacturer’s guidance. However, very few studies have examined the effectiveness of medical equipment maintenance to ensure device reliability and prevent failure. However, at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario’s (CHEO) problem and repair codes are used to categorize the maintenance work-orders. Consequently, maintenance data were collected from the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) for period of up to 6 years, covering 229 pieces of the Alaris infusion pump controllers 8105 to be used for the analysis of the effectiveness of their preventive maintenance (PM) carried out at CHEO. An effective PM is defined as one where the technologist preformed the steps required by manufacturer for PM, and device did not fail, in the next 12 months or until next PM, due to PM-preventable failure. Careful analysis of more than 950 PM work orders collected showed that both the procedure and interval of the manufacturer’s recommended PM for these controllers is effective. However, following a couple of recommendations should help to optimize the time and resources that are spent maintaining these controllers at CHEO.

Presenter: Lama Yassin-Kassab - Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (Supervised by Marie-Ange Janvier and Kim Greenwood)

Building a Clinical Engineering department: A novel metric-based approach to staffing and workload balancing: Appropriate staffing and workload balancing are two of the many challenges that clinical engineering departments encounter daily. Metric based models forecasting PM workloads and analyzing historical CM workloads to predict future needs are one tool that can be used to ensure departments are right sized with appropriate resources. The Ottawa Hospital was used to demonstrate the development and application of these two novel metric-based models for both staffing and workload balancing. The paper also presents a Canada-wide qualitative survey highlighting the consistent challenges in clinical engineering departments across the country.

Presenter: Chris Gray - The Ottawa Hospital (Supervised by Andrew Ibey)