WE ARE HAPPY TO HAVE RECEIVED SOME reaction to our June 2007 "Soapbox" article, "A Legacy of Safety," from our colleague Binseng Wang (see November 2007 "Soapbox"). We do wish he had directed his argument to the proposition of defining our activities in the manner we have. Does he have a disagreement with the definitions we put forth?
The functionality of a medical device can be defined by these three factors: accuracy, precision, and reliability. Although maintenance actions are not generally defined in these terms, any maintenance action performed is to ensure at least one of them.
Accuracy is a measure of the deviation of some parameter of the device from a ...