Importance Of Remote And Predictive Maintenance Of Medical Equipment

Cloud IoT technologies enable remote management and monitoring of medical devices and advanced data analysis – both in the cloud and at the edge.

Fremont, CA: The medical and healthcare systems worldwide are being transformed by digitalization, with IoT technologies playing an increasingly important role, particularly in the remote and predictive maintenance of medical equipment.

Cloud IoT enables predictive and remote maintenance to assist healthcare organizations in real-time monitoring, maintenance, and optimizing their equipment. Here's everything you need to know about what it can do, the obstacles to IoT integration, and what to expect in the future.

Medical Equipment Predictive Maintenance

Healthcare professionals and equipment manufacturers can remotely collect and analyze performance data from a medical device to predict malfunctions before they occur. Like any other machine, pumps, filters, and parts in medical devices have a life cycle and must be replaced at regular intervals. Typically, hospital staff has technicians on-site to check these machines and their components to ensure they're in good working order. Still, if an issue is overlooked and the machine breaks, it can cause downtime and disruption to patient treatments.

To make this process more efficient, as well as to reduce the need for manual checks and the likelihood of breakdowns, IoT technologies can be used to read data from the machine's components to determine how long it has been in operation and how much time it has left before it reaches the end of its life cycle and needs to be replaced. The hospital maintenance team can then be notified ahead of time so that replacement parts can be ordered and installed.

Remote Service Maintenance

The Internet of Things also allows for the remote configuration of medical devices between patients. Normally, technicians or medical staff would be required to manually change the settings of medical devices, such as changing the settings on a dialysis machine from one patient to the next to ensure the correct treatment is being given. IoT can allow the necessary patient settings to be configured remotely at the back end to correspond with the various appointments. The only intervention required from medical personnel is to clean the machines after each use and greet the patient, allowing more medical time and resources to be focused elsewhere.