You-Ming Wang, Engineer, Dept. of Medical Engineering

According to statistics by the Department of Medical Engineering, the total number of medical devices in our hospital is about 7000 and is increasing year by year. The staff must inventory medical devices in the entire hospital every year. Traditional inventory procedure relies on manual operation including 8 steps, namely data export, screening, printing, allocation, verification, reporting, revision, and import. Every step is time-consuming and prone to errors. In the past, hardcopies were used for inventory, which not only consumes hardcopy resources but also is very time-consuming.

Since 2016, our hospital has developed and implemented the “Computerized Medical Device Management System” using QR code. Afterwards, the QR code labels were attached on all the medical devices in hospital. In 2017, an APP on smart phone was developed at the end of 2017. Hospital staff could use this APP to scan QR code labels for mobile inventory, which effectively decreases wastage of hardcopy resources. The use of QR code label scanning to replace manual copying has greatly simplified the operation steps and increased work efficiency.

The medical device database constructed by inventorying effectively combines the medical device resources of the entire hospital and helps the department in evaluating the procurement of new equipment or equipment replacement and achieve the aim of reducing the budget. The APP inventory can indirectly check the localization of the medical device so that the medical device information in the system is well updated. During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, the APP also effectively enabled immediate allocation and deployment of medical devices to examination stations and isolation wards within a short period of time, and provided good and safe medical quality to patients.