Newswatch: October 2004

Siemens offers remote options for 24/7 technology operation

The service organization of Siemens Medical Solutions (Malvern, Pa) recently released its Guardian Program for angiography and invasive cardiology technologies. This new customer care program ensures the continuous uptime of medical systems and offers proactive remote monitoring, a guaranteed timeframe for system maintenance, guaranteed key components availability, access to technical experts, and a guarantee of 99% system uptime.

The Guardian Program enables customer service engineers to consult with a customer within minutes of remotely noticing a possible malfunction. Plus, systems are monitored in real time. The program constantly runs diagnostics to check the parameters of the systems, allowing engineers to proactively prevent and repair malfunctions before they cause downtime.

"[The Guardian Program] is a more proactive way to do business, taking service to a new level in caring for the customer," said Randy Hill, senior VP of Siemens' service organization. "The ability to have all levels of service support involved immediately if there is a potential problem pending is essential when patients are undergoing critical interventional procedures."

External monitoring of the hospital's technologies is accessible only with specific service codes provided by the hospital, making the program compliant with HIPAA regulations.

Currently offered for a select variety of cardiac and angiography systems, the Guardian program is available for all Axiom Artis systems, and connects through syngo, which is Siemens' standard user interface.