Based on the needs assessment of the medical and non-medical departments, the Investment Committee of the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA), a teaching hospital in Brazil, recommends on which technologies the limited financial resources should be invested. Technology inclusion requests are evaluated by the hospital's technology assessment unit. For technology replacement, we have found models to assess the criticality of medical equipment, but they were insufficient to support the decision, which involves all departments of our hospital. This study aimed to develop an automated tool to support decision making regarding investments in equipment replacement in the hospital.

A working group was set up with professionals from healthcare administration, clinical engineering and research departments. From the hospital's inventory database, we developed the tool using Google SheetsR. We have defined three departments for pilot testing of the tool: hemodynamics, laundry, and basic research. These departments represent the areas of healthcare, support services, and teaching and research in the hospital.

The criticality of medical equipment is assessed based on the criteria of function, physical risk, impact, remaining equipment life cycle, intensity of use and number of corrective maintenance actions performed. For the equipment in the administrative, support and research areas, the function and physical risk criteria were replaced by the safety and by the risks to the quality of service criteria. The evaluation is carried out by a multidisciplinary team. The tool categorizes the equipment into low, medium and high criticality.

The tool prioritized the equipment based on objective criteria evaluated by the departments’ multidisciplinary team comprising experts who use the equipment in their activities, the department administrator and clinical engineers, and provided transparency regarding the decision-making of the hospital's Investment Committee. In 2019, the limited financial resources were invested only in the replacement of highly critical equipment. We believe the tool can be reproduced in hospitals in low and middle-income countries.