News

Steffen Klengel, MD, head of the Medical Care Center RadCom GmbH, in Riesa, Germany, is the first Siemens customer worldwide who has ordered a magnetic resonance system (MRI), a MAGNETOM^® Symphony, which has been refurbished with a new scalable refurbishment offering. With such a process, he was able to choose specifically which refurbishment options he wanted and which ones he did not want for his new purchase.

The initial situation

The facility is already an owner of many Proven Excellence certified Siemens’ equipment, which includes a MAGNETOM Avanto 1.5 Tesla MRI, two 1.5 Tesla MAGNETOM Symphony MRIs, a MAGNETOM Impact Expert 1.0 Tesla MRI, as well as two SOMATOM^® Sensation 4 and SOMATOM Sensation 16 CT scanners. The radiologist’s MAGNETOM Impact Expert was ready to be replaced, and he was seeking a high-quality, cost-efficient, and environmentally sustainable solution. The replacement system was also intended to relieve some of the patient load of his existing high-end system MAGNETOM Avanto.

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Dr. Klengel during an MRI scan with MAGNETOM Avanto

The solution

The MAGNETOM Impact Expert will soon be replaced by a refurbished MAGNETOM Symphony MRI. With the new acquisition, Klengel is able to optimize the practice’s clinical workflow by relieving some of the work load of the existing, more sophisticated system MAGNETOM Avanto. Klengel explains: “With our new system, we lay the emphasis on the joints, spine, and skull examinations. A heart scan, for example, requires a highly equipped system. This is where Avanto comes into use.” As chairman of a reforestation club, his decision was also influenced by environmental considerations, and in this respect, he found a partner in Siemens. The company takes back medical equipment from the initial customers and then refurbishes them according to strict quality standards. Nine refurbished MRI and CT systems have been installed by the MCC since 1997, thus avoiding about 923 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the systems' manufacturing process.

The options

Based on this established refurbishing process, Siemens developed a new offering taking into account the needs and demands of the customers, like Klengel. A Siemens customer can now pick and choose from different refurbishment options; in addition to the basic refurbishment which is done for all systems. The option "New" includes the replacement of the current coils with new ones. With the "Aesthetic Refurbishment", all visible parts are repainted to look like new, and new accessories such as tabletop mattresses or arm supports are added. With the "Technical" and the "IT Refurbishment" option, the customer opts for the latest standard of hard- or software. When Klengel made his decision for a new MAGNETOM Symphony scanner, he chose three of the available refurbishment options. In addition to new, powerful and dedicated gradient coils (option: New Refurbishment) for joint and head examinations, he also considered it important to own the latest syngo^® software (option: IT Refurbishment) for specific sequence protocols and advanced diffusion imaging. “A consistent user interface is one of the key advantages of the Siemens system,” says Klengel. In addition to the Aesthetic Refurbishment option, the radiologist liked the zebra-covers, which helps alleviate patients’ fears. However, Klengel forwent the complete coil equipment since he already has them available for the high-end equipped MAGNETOM Avanto.

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The results

The ability to choose the refurbishment options according to the customers’ needs – especially the option to not refurbish certain parts of the system – keeps the energy-consumption during the refurbishment as low as possible. Besides the environmental aspect, this concept also boasts economic advantages. Klengel explains, "By purchasing used instead of new equipment, we save almost 30 percent in costs. Only because of this cost-effectiveness are we able to offer our patients a comprehensive range of high technical performance and diagnostic capability." In Klengel’s point of view, the refurbishment of medical systems makes absolute sense. "To me, sustainability in radiology means to optimize the entire diagnostic process – not only in manufacturing medical technology, also in the use of this technique. A meaningless waste of resources must be avoided."