What Potential Does IoT Have for Saving Lives?

IoT in Healthcare Today

Operating a healthcare facility in today’s highly regulated environment is no small task. On top of salaries and all the normal expenses associated with running a business, medical centers must maintain millions of dollars in state-of-the-art equipment if they are going to remain competitive.

Maintaining that equipment can literally be a matter of life or death—imagine the impact and repercussions of an MRI out of calibration. For starters, you’re looking at a potential misdiagnosis, which can lead to a life-threatening situation for a patient. That in and of itself can be a tragedy, but it would be one further compounded by a major lawsuit. And more than potentially endangering someone’s life and then dealing with the legal and other expenses involved in such a situation, your organization’s reputation would be put on the line.

And then there’s the issue of compliance: Regulators today require stringent documentation of every process and activity associated with a piece of equipment. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) requires reporting compliance with equipment inventory and maintenance.

To ensure accuracy in testing, reduce risk, and stay in compliance, equipment must be properly calibrated and maintained across the entire enterprise—regardless of how many facilities there are in an organization.

So how can your healthcare organization ensure its assets are properly tuned and making the most of your investment? With an IBM asset management solution.

IBM’s Maximo Asset Management solution has functionalities that address the specific needs of IoT in health care facilities, including instrument, tool, and equipment calibration capabilities. The solution also offers automated support for audits, records, and electronic signatures. And Maximo supports corrective and preventive action (CAPA) related to assets, systematically investigating the root causes of problems to prevent failures from occurring or recurring.

Maximo can also manage your critical assets by helping you increase equipment availability and reduce the costs of operating and maintaining your high-end medical technologies.

The Benefits of IoT in Healthcare Continue to Evolve

Whether you’re trying to reduce downtime and improve quality by performing predictive maintenance on a machine, proactively managing an asset to reduce operating costs and ensure proper calibration, or keeping consistent logs for regulatory purposes, an IBM solution can help your healthcare facility operate more safely and efficiently.

Timbergrove Solutions, an IBM Advanced Business Partner, knows what healthcare organizations need to manage their assets in today’s competitive and highly regulated environment. The knowledgeable professionals at Timbergrove can implement a Maximo solution to help you stay calibrated and in compliance.