A Mathematical Model for Prioritizing Medical Devices Replacement
摘要
The National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER, its acronym in Spanish) is a public tertiary care hospital with an installed technological capacity of more than 8,000 medical devices. Some of these are more than 20 years old, which can increase maintenance costs and/or not have adequate functionality However, the technological replacement of these devices is complicated, resulting in an increasing number of medical equipment lacking available spare parts, consumables in the market, and technical support from the provider. Therefore, INER is interested in evaluating and prioritizing the medical devices that will be included in the annual medical technology replacement programs. The objective of this work was to develop an evidence-based evaluation instrument that provides auxiliary criteria for decision-making in the replacement of medical devices. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to develop a mathematical model based on two partial indicators that assess the technical and economic aspects, which are integrated into a global indicator (IG). Additionally, a qualitative scale was proposed to interpret the IG result and suggest a priority and timeframe for the replacement of the medical device. This evaluation model was applied to a sample of 591 medical devices from INER.