By: Shivam Anand– Manager (Procurement & Hospital Services)

Strategic Alliance Management Services Pvt. Ltd -Delhi

Medical equipment planning is a techno-commercial process because of its complexity and evolving technologies and procurement costs thereof. Medical equipment planning should be integrated in a way that optimizes the best patient care possible, efficient healthcare delivery, and total /accrued cost over product life cycle & maintenance, and last but not the least opportunity cost.

Mapping Medical Equipment Planning:

1. Technical & Commercial Assessment: A technical assessment of requirement based on the user expectations & experience and latest technologies available. Practicality and viability assessment is also required to finalize the requirement.
2. Estimation of the requirement: Budgeting and estimation should be done considering the availability of fund and financial resources of the organization.
3. Formulation of Technical Specification: Minimum technical specification should be defined before procurement of equipment. The following point should be considered during the finalization of technical specification:

• Current work load and projected work load.
• Availability of the best technologies for procurement.
• Procurement estimate.
• Clinical Infrastructure mandate & requirement.
• Overall Operational & Maintenance cost.

4. Procurement planning: Procurement planning should be designed in such a way to procure the medical equipment with desired specifications at lowest/best price.

Following points need to be adhered to during procurement planning.

• Rates of consumables and accessories need to be finalized along with the procurement of equipment.
• Recurring expense & maintenance expenses shall also be taken into account while finalizing the equipment.
• Performance evaluation should be done before finalizing the equipment.
• After sale service and availability of spare parts/accessories, preferably finalizing AMC/CMC post warranty during procurement itself to realize better value of the deal.
• Product Life expectancy may be assessed at the time of procurement.
• Integration requirement of equipment with existing communication system(IT/PACS) of organization.