The 2020 International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare

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In his role as a simulation center specialist at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, Nady Rizkallah is responsible for providing operational and maintenance support for all associated equipment and software, including physiologic monitors, personal computers, and wireless communication systems. Supplementing nearly five decades of experience in this area, Nady Rizkallah holds membership with the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH).

Established in 2004, SSH works to improve the quality of healthcare via professional development in areas such as virtual reality, human patient simulators, and task trainers. To that end, it is the leading sponsor of the International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH), which is celebrating its 20th anniversary in January 2020.

The 20th annual IMSH will be held from January 18 to 22 in San Diego and feature courses like “Redesign Healthcare Processes and Redefine Patient Safety Through Simulation” and “Effective Simulation Space Design.” It will also include events like the #SimFit20 Fun/Run Walk, President's Diamond Ball, and 10th Annual Serious Games & Virtual Environments Arcade & Showcase.

The event's opening plenary session will be led by Carey Lohrenz, who was the first woman in the U.S. Navy to fly the F-14 Tomcat Fighter Jet. She will speak on areas such as leadership, diversity training, and high performing organizations. Other speakers include Tim Draycott and Mick Ebeling, the latter of whom was named as one of the World's Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine.

What Is Preventive Maintenance?

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An accomplished biomedical engineer, Nady Rizkallah has over four decades of experience dealing with medical technology equipment. As a veteran in the medical industry, he has worked with multiple organizations in numerous roles. A computer science graduate with a master’s degree from California State University, Nady Rizkallah now works as a simulation center specialist at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. He focuses on technical proficiency in all aspects of operation, programming, and maintenance support for various type of medical equipment.

Maintenance support primarily focuses on preventive maintenance, which is performed on a regular basis in order to ensure electronic and computer systems perform their functions smoothly and avoid inconvenient, costly, unscheduled downtime. A preventive maintenance plan also comes in handy to ensure maintenance support activities are well prioritized. Preventive maintenance should be performed while the equipment is still in good working condition. A good preventative maintenance plan should include performing an inventory of equipment and assets that need to be maintained. All equipment to be included in maintenance should be listed, in addition to their specifications.

Prioritization is a key preventative maintenance procedure, as it is important to decide which assets should be placed first in the schedule. Ideally, the most critical assets should be first in the maintenance queue. Key issues to consider when prioritizing assets include importance of the machines to organizational success, cost of repair and replacement, and the frequency of maintenance required. To maximize returns, it makes sense to begin with equipment that needs regular maintenance and is expensive to repair. After deciding on the assets to include in a preventive maintenance plan, it is then critical to create a list of specific maintenance support tasks performed on each asset, as well as how regularly these tasks should be performed.