The service Siemens Guardian Program™ offers customers proactive online monitoring of medical system performance on an ongoing real-time basis. Thereby, customers such as the University Hospital Brussels (Universitair Ziekenhuis – UZ Brussel) in Belgium profit from the high level of system availability, making it possible to detect and resolve system errors before malfunctions occur. Professor Danny Schoors, Head of the Cardiology Department, describes how Siemens prevented a system failure on an angiography system: “One day we were treating a patient on the AXIOM Artis dBC and were just about to place a stent when we received a call from the Siemens service center.” The Siemens expert informed Professor Schoors that the electronic cabinet had exceeded its normal temperature limit and recommended a system shutdown in order to prevent damage to the system.

“This call took us totally by surprise since we had not determined any inconsistency in the system’s operation. After the Siemens call, one of our engineers went to the room where the electronic cabinet stands. Opening the door, we quickly realized that the cooling of the room did not work properly. Fortunately, just opening the door of the room helped to lower the temperature of the system below the critical level and we could continue the treatment while a technician fixed the cooling”, reports Schoors.
For the UZ Brussels, high system reliability and availability are essential: The number of patient examinations increased about 25 percent over the last three years and the systems operate at full capacity. Any unplanned system failure does not only bring long waiting times for patients who have to be rescheduled, but also causes loss of profit for the clinic. Hence, Guardian Program also increases budget planning certainty for the clinic.

Yet another example shows how the Guardian Program helps to improve workflow and allows for smooth operation at UZ Brussels: A Siemens expert detected remotely that the image acquisition may be disturbed. The physicians at UZ Brussels received a call from the Siemens service center during preparation for the first patient examination in the morning. “The Siemens expert told us to reboot the system and to test acquisition before treating a patient. The acquisition worked perfectly after the re-start and there was no interruption of our clinical workflow. If Siemens had not informed us beforehand, we would have started the examination without knowing that there might be a problem until we had inserted the contrast agent and performed the acquisition. Thus the real-time system monitoring with Guardian Program saved valuable time and avoided failures during patient treatment”, says Professor Schoors.

Key Benefits of the Siemens Guardian Program

• Proactive real-time monitoring of system parameters
• Quick feedback from Siemens experts in case of malfunctions
• System availability of up to 99 percent
• Improved planning reliability and smooth workflow