EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Biomed Databases Generic Equipment Type

Help! I know it's on here but I can't find it! There is a list of generic abbreviations for equipment and I am being really lazy and trying to steal it as were currently changing from excell to an asset management database and with four engineers inputting their own version i.e A&E, A and E, Accident and emergency or casualty!!!! it's taking me alot to rationalise it!

Heather
The US is rolling out a system of Unique Device Identifiers this is coming to Europe as well.
Watch this space. It might help you.
Robert
PS I would avoid GMDN, it is a nightmare.

Heather, are you adding RFID to your asset database, then it does not matter what they call the departments. I thought that excel and access were both old hat for asset management, Do you have a web based system? (SQL)

This "problem" comes up from time to time ... and a half-hour spent reviewing this forum (Biomed databases) might offer up a few clues about how to proceed ... but (regardless of which "system" is being used - and "old-hat" or not) the best way has always been for one person to sit down and spend a few hours (or days - as long as it takes) to sort it out.

"Design by committee" is definately not the answer here.

Other than that, draw up (set down) your "rules" - then stick to them.

But I'm intrigued ... which new system have you gone for? And does it not offer some sort of guidance (or even restrictions) about how to enter your data? Formats, codes, templates ... whatever?

You have mentioned user department names. Those should be easy enough (as there are never that many). In a well-designed system, you enter your preferred names just once, and then refer to those (in a pull-down - or look-up - list) when needed. In other words, you should only need to enter any data like that just the one time.

The "trouble" with the global categorisation systems (like the one RoJo has pointed to) is that they are often a bit OTT for local (hospital) BME use. I have found them more suited to new hospital projects, and the like.

Lastly, if I were "starting again from scratch", I think I would consider a hierarchical system for BME equipment identification:-

Class -> Sub-class etc. etc.

... just a thought. But again, probably "over-kill" for the typical in-house BME situation, where the simple (and traditional) method usually works well enough:-

Manufacturer -> Model -> Equipment Type

... and I'm guessing that it's the "Equipment Type" (class) bit that you're grappling with at the moment. What did you do before (how did the old system handle this - or was it just the usual "mess")?

If you want, send your .xls spreadsheet to me and I'll take a look. Can't be fairer than that!

... not to mention:- expensive.

Meanwhile, I believe that the UDI will be (is) assigned by the manufacturer, rather than by "us" (the biomeds, Property Control ... whomever). I suspect it will be (yet another) bar-code hidden away at the back of the kit. Does anyone have any details about it?

There's some interesting information in this .pdf but I don't see anything about the style (structure, format, rationale) of the UDI coding itself.

I presume it will be something like a combination of a code for the manufacturer and another for the specific model plus the serial number.
That would be interesting to decode as often the manufacturer and the name on the box are different.
Let us hope it is as simple as that.
But I some how doubt it.
Robert

Another year ... another label.

And just imagine what it will be like when or if the "Europeans" get hold of it!

Meanwhile, I think I'll just soldier on with my own (simple) codes that have served me so well for the last 25 years!

Hi Heather,

Best general advice I could offer here is to , as much as possible, block free text entry. This will at least remove the A&E, A+E, etc issue and the like.
You generally can't block it for everything but the more you can the cleaner your data will be and, clean data is usable data
I would think ECRI would have a standardised list of equipment types, I'll try to have a look when back at work tomorrow.

Dave

So far this department has only been using excel for assets but we are now having to put the assets onto our hospital database called FACTS which is were all are jobs are generated from. We have recently bought the Rigel 288 safety testers and understand that you can generate an asset register from this and add ppm sheets etc. The problem we have is that we have no-one in house who understands how to convert our excell database to the SQL database we have very limited knowledge regarding SQL. Next problem is that the hospital IT department won't allow us to upload the software to their network, so our rigel software is on a stand alone computer running XP so we need to find software that will change our excell database to SQL and be compatible with windows XP. Any IT bods got any suggestions?

Sack the IT department