A soft approach to clinical engineering integration in health care

The healthcare system evolution and the amount of the healthcare equipments out of service in the developing countries, justify the need of seeking other ways for that the integration of the Clinical Engineering in the healthcare environment is improved. A novel manner of work to the Clinical Engineering is analyzing the HT with a process point of view. The health technological process and HT concepts are stated. A management model for improvements in the health technological processes, denominated Healthcare Technology Management (HTM), is proposed. To get contextualized information from a health technological process and assisting in the HTM implementation, the soft approach used in the Operational Research area for systematization of complex problems were investigated. The MCDA (Multicriteria Decision Aid) is an Operational Research methodology from soft approach that it may be used to get contextualized information from health technological processes. The results show that the suggestions from the multicriteria model obtained with the MCDA could assist the Clinical Engineering to implement the HTM. In this way, the Clinical Engineering area must develop an effective involvement in the decision making procedures, passing on to be a support actor for being one of the decision makers in the healthcare environment.