An emergency medical device (20) (e.g., an external defibrillator/monitor) employing an emergency medical subsystem (21) for executing an emergency medical procedure (e.g., a monitoring subsystem (21) and a therapy subsystem (21)), and an emergency medical controller (23) for controlling an activation of the emergency medical subsystem (21). The subsystem (21) includes one or more operational components (22). In operation, the controller (23) conditionally actuates a device readiness indicator (24) (e.g., auditory or visual) indicative of an operational readiness of the operational component(s) (22), and conditionally actuates a failure warning indicator (25) (e.g., auditory or visual) indicative of a pending failure of the operational readiness of the operational component(s) (22). The failure warning indicator (25) may be actuated based on a predictive failure analysis of a premature degradation of the operational component(s) (22), a repeated occurrence of error conditions of the operational component(s) (22) (particularly recoverable error conditions), and a shortened reliable life of the operational component(s) (22).