Maintenance history visualizer to facilitate solving intermittent problems

A service device for assisting in the service of a medical device, comprising:

• a display device;
• at least one user input device;
• and
• at least one electronic processor programmed to:
• identifying attribute values for attributes of a plurality of previous service cases from a service log from the medical device for which service support is sought;
• identifying a set of relevant service cases from the plurality of previous service cases by comparing the identified attribute values from one or more service logs from one or more other medical devices for the previous service cases with attribute values from the service log from the medical device for a current service case using a comparison metric indicative of relevance of the previous service case to the current service case and a relevance threshold;
• generate a timeline of services cases based on attributes of previous service cases stored in a database as a function of calendar dates of the relevant service cases;
• display, on the display device, the generated timeline of service cases and a relevance graphical user interface (GUI) dialog;
• receive, via the at least one user input device, a selection of the relevance GUI dialog for user adjustment of a relevance threshold between attributes of the current service case and attributes of the previous service cases;
• and
• dynamically update the generated timeline of service cases based on the user adjustment of the relevance GUI dialog.

A medical device service method, comprising:

• identifying attribute values for attributes of a plurality of previous service cases from a service log from the medical device for which service support is sought;
• identifying a set of relevant service cases from the plurality of previous service cases by comparing the identified attribute values from one or more service logs from one or more other medical devices for the previous service cases with attribute values from the service log from the medical device for a current service case using a comparison metric indicative of relevance of the previous service case to the current service case and a relevance threshold;
• extracting replacement parts from the service log including associating each replacement part with a previous service case;
• plotting, on a display device, a timeline of relevant service cases of the set of relevant service cases as a function of calendar dates of the relevant service cases, the timeline including at least (i) a scheduled maintenance timeline of relevant scheduled service cases of the set of relevant service cases as a function of calendar dates of the relevant scheduled service cases, and (ii) an unscheduled maintenance timeline of relevant unscheduled service cases of the set of relevant service cases as a function of calendar dates of the relevant unscheduled service cases and (iii) representations of the replacement parts associated with the plotted relevant service cases, wherein the scheduled maintenance timeline and the unscheduled maintenance timeline have aligned time axes;
• providing, on the display device, a relevance graphical user interface (GUI) dialog for user adjustment of the relevance threshold via at least one user input device;
• and
• responsive to user adjustment of the relevance threshold via the relevance GUI dialog, repeating the identifying and plotting to dynamically update the plotted timeline on the basis of the user adjustment of the relevance metric.