What is Healthcare CMMS software?
Healthcare CMMS software is a specialized tool designed to streamline and optimize maintenance operations within healthcare facilities such as hospitals, clinics, and medical centers. This software helps healthcare organizations manage their equipment, assets, and facilities more effectively, ensuring that critical medical equipment is properly maintained, compliant with regulations, and available when needed.
The era of maintenance is long gone. And structured maintenance in the service sector is now a must. This cannot be done easily without healthcare software, a CMMS that can be configured as standard, and adaptable to the functional flows of each organization.
CMMS stands for Computerized Maintenance Management System. It is professional software, a software package that contains all the data of the curative maintenance operations carried out and in anticipation. The purpose of this tool is to help functional managers in their conduct of maintenance activities. But above all, it facilitates their life, communication, and decision-making, in the service of the organization, thanks to a computerized memory and parameterized flows. Regulatory standards encourage action, and CMMS is able to provide the most suitable tools for compliance with standards while promoting the company’s competitiveness.
In healthcare, well-planned ordinary maintenance allows for the prevention of breakdowns and malfunctions, contributing to a reduction in the risks associated with the use of medical devices. Furthermore, it also allows a reduction in plant downtimes and the guaranteed quality of the health services offered. Without forgetting the economic advantage, which has a significant impact on the budgets of health facilities.
That’s what CMMS software is for
The management of a production plant or a maintenance company can become very difficult and complicated, requiring a lot of time for those who are in charge of keeping the paper documentation in order concerning the scheduling of interventions, the registration of repairs and replacements, the expected deadlines in the field of safety, in addition to inventory procedures.
The use of CMMS software represents a valid solution to simplify and improve all these situations. Thanks to a CMMS software it is in fact possible to manage workflows throughout their path starting from the generation to the assignment of priorities for interventions and staff shifts both for troubleshooting interventions and for those relating to periodic, preventive, or scheduled maintenance.
The operation of the CMMS, as software for the maintenance plan, is based on the use of a database in which the system collects all the information which can thus be made easily accessible to anyone who needs it. Furthermore, the reports provided can be used to calculate the KPIs (performance indicators) that is the effectiveness of the interventions performed, and fundamental data for making decisions on the corrective or improvement actions to be started. Methods of carrying out the works, information on plants and equipment, spare parts/equipment required and their availability, executing personnel, and allowed and actual manpower hours are just some of the features of CMMS software, whose list is drawn up on the basis of the specific needs of the client company.
Thanks to the system’s ability to integrate different processes, maintenance managers have full control of operations, from work acquisition to its completion. This allows them to optimize the use of available resources (labor, spare parts, equipment) in order to keep plants and machinery in the best condition.
Areas of application
The areas in which CMMS software is necessary to range considerably from simple to structured realities in which a Maintenance Information System is necessary for plant management. However, given that the main purpose of CMMS software is to optimize resources by keeping management costs under strict control and ensuring the growth of profit margins, it is clear that the sectors in which it is fully useful are represented by identifiable structured companies mainly in the following sectors:
- Industry
- Tertiary
- Healthcare
- Transportation and Logistics
- Power
- Defense
CMMS In Healthcare
With the expansion of healthcare facilities and the growing number of electromedical devices that science makes available, the need to manage healthcare technologies effectively and efficiently is becoming more and more pressing.
Also in this sector, relying on CMMS software proves to be a choice capable of improving the overall management of a facility, its medical equipment as well as the personnel who work there.
The information processed by CMMS software in the healthcare sector varies according to the situation in which it operates, but always includes preventive maintenance procedures, equipment management, performance indicators (KPI) analysis, equipment inventory including the history of maintenance interventions and their life, the management of personnel involved in maintenance. Furthermore, using CMMS software, the data can be accessed, manipulated, and used through the use of user-friendly interfaces even from mobile devices. Reports that can be generated using the system’s database help decision-makers.
For any healthcare facility whether it is a hospital, clinic, or laboratory, unexpected repair costs, as well as the resulting unavailability of machinery, represent one of the main causes of economic loss.
Thanks to the use of a CMMS as software for the maintenance plan, it is possible to contain the occurrence of these circumstances, thus eliminating or reducing the entity of the problem. Maintaining an efficient organization always requires the combined ability and commitment of all the people who work there: but this is not enough. In fact, often the numerous pieces of information that circulate are exchanged in a fragmented way with the result of dispersing their value.
CMMS benefits
Today, through the use of a CMMS, experiences can be collected and organized in a profitable way through intelligent management that is easily usable by managers and employees. Efficient maintenance management guarantees organizations by protecting them from the risk of significant losses of time, productivity, and therefore money.
A good CMMS software represents a decisive point of reference for all maintenance activities.
Through its use, it allows administrators, maintenance teams, engineers, technicians, nurses, and medical personnel to access and interact on different aspects of the activity.
Below we list some of these possibilities.
- Management of the technical documentation of the structure with the possibility of keeping it in one place and accessible via PC or mobile device from any place.
- Workflow management from start to finish with the possibility of creating, organizing, and keeping track of interventions assigned from any PC or mobile device (Work requests, Work orders, etc…).
- Store data in online files to easily find relevant information on any activity by accelerating diagnosis and decision-making.
- Centralized management of equipment and personnel to optimize their use.
- Automatically schedule notifications of recurring maintenance activities.
- Easy exchange of information thanks to the ability to respond in real-time to requests for intervention from any mobile device connected to the internet. In addition to improving the planning of the interventions, this also improves the satisfaction of the applicants who are informed about the status of their request.
- Efficiency improvement with consequent cost reduction. It is evident that through the combined action of actions such as the efficient management of work orders, the execution of regular inspections and preventive maintenance, and the appropriate monitoring of employees and other records relating to company assets, a software CMMS for healthcare companies is able to remove obstacles making the workflow efficient.
Digital solutions for the maintenance of healthcare assets: systems and infrastructures
Healthcare facilities are first and foremost buildings. And as such, they are equipped with systems and services whose proper functioning, in such a strategic context, becomes even more crucial.
Lighting, heating, and air treatment systems, but also lifts and freight elevators, are vital assets for the functioning of these infrastructures. Even more strategic are the medical gas distribution systems and fire-fighting devices.
In addition to all aspects related to the maintenance of electromedical equipment, the CMMS must be able to manage the scheduled and corrective maintenance of the systems as well, so as to be able to guarantee their effective and efficient use.
In a critical context such as the healthcare one, it must then be possible to promptly verify the supplier’s compliance with the envisaged regulations and verify the effective validity of the certifications held by the technicians who will have to carry out the maintenance operations.
A good CMMS software for the maintenance of healthcare assets, designed specifically for applications in the healthcare sector, must not neglect these aspects either.
