Advances in Engineering and Information Technology in the recent years have brought about several changes in the field of Medical Science. Medical Equipment play a very significant role in the field of medicine and healthcare delivery system. Sophisticated biomedical equipment require a host of utilities like the air conditioning and refrigeration, stabilised power supply systems etc. The design criteria of these support systems are of paramount importance.

Hospital equipment fall into an extremely wide spectrum ranging right from a hi- tech MRI and CT scanner to a simple patient trolley. These all account for a major part of any hospital project cost, which could go upto almost 60%. Of this, biomedical equipment could account for nearly 50% of the cost. Keeping this in view it is essential to ensure maximum utilisation of the equipment with minimum downtime.

The health care industry is experiencing a new era in cost containment. In the past, little attention was given to the financial impact of equipment related decisions. Today, however, times have changed. In this new environment, "state-of-the-art" is no longer sufficient as planning criteria for selecting new technology. Today, for a technology to be appropriate, it must address the needs for efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and productivity and at the same time, improve or maintain the quality of patient care. In addition, hospitals are finding themselves in an extremely competitive arena, which puts an additional emphasis on a technology's marketability. The challenge faced by hospital executives today is to gain the management and control required to make effective equipment planning decisions.

Whilst medical devices can be broadly categorised into diagnostic and therapeutic equipment, the selection criteria for procurement would need to take into account several factors viz. type of hospital & level of services provided; services available in the neighbourhood and technology employed; background of the staff that would operate the equipment; proposed tariff for the services employing medical devoices; etc. Having addressed these issues one would need to carry out a separate financial feasibility for the major and critical equipment and then set out to prepare the specifications and features of the medical devices that would be considered most appropriate for the hospital. After having undergone this exercise too there are multiple products that one can choose from. For this one would need to apply further criteria and do a detailed analysis of factors related to the technology and design base of the equipment; the maintenance convenience and available service support; forthcoming technology and interchangeability with the current generation; presence of the manufacturer / vendor in the existing market place; and once again the factors are several!