GE Healthcare Enhances Service Capabilities To Address Continued Growth Of Compact Ultrasound Systems

Main Category: MRI / PET / Ultrasound
Also Included In: Medical Devices / Diagnostics
Article Date: 11 Jul 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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GE Healthcare announced that its LOGIQ e compact ultrasound users are embracing a new service that allows them to connect their ultrasound systems, via secure broadband connection, to the technical support and clinical applications experts at GE's LiveAssist Center. This innovative digital connectivity, called InSite ExC, provides customers with "real time" remote resolution of service and applications events.

"Fast response is especially important to our LOGIQ e customers," said Ann Marie Lubert, GE Healthcare's General Manager of Ultrasound Americas Services, noting that the devices are used primarily in such settings as emergency departments, surgical suites, anesthesiology, cardiology and private physicians' offices. "At these sites, backup equipment may not be readily available. So remaining operational is absolutely critical."

GE Healthcare continued as the global market share leader in the compact ultrasound industry in 2007, as cited in a recent industry report issued by Klein Biomedical Consultants, an internationally recognized source of ultrasound market data and trends. With the rapid acceptance of the compact units, Lubert said, there are many new users requiring immediate assistance. In addition, customers are faced with continuing IT challenges, such as integration with their facilities' EMR and PACS systems; in fact, most customer inquiries associated with this new technology are related to network configuration and connectivity.

"These problems are almost tailor-made for InSite ExC," she said. "This innovative capability allows our users to connect their LOGIQ e systems, via secure broadband connection, to the technical support and clinical applications experts at GE's LiveAssist Center. Because our LiveAssist staff is able to view and control the same screens our customers are seeing, they can often diagnose and resolve problems on the spot. InSite ExC makes a major contribution to the uptime equation."

Lubert said that her team monitors this growth closely and has scaled their offerings to proactively meet market demands during this period of rapid growth. Her goal is to ensure customer satisfaction over the life of this technology, with support offerings to address any user's needs.

In addition to the LiveAssist Center, LOGIQ e customers have ready access to one of the largest dedicated ultrasound field engineer teams for on-site service calls. Another important customer resource is the GE Premier Repair Center in Madison, Wis. Dedicated to compact ultrasound service and stocked with loaner units that can be shipped immediately, this facility's staff of certified repair technicians was recently doubled to manage the dramatic increase in system sales; as a result, the average time-to-repair is just 12 to 24 hours and sometimes its only a matter of minutes due to InSite ExC.

Lubert said this is just one example of GE's commitment to providing the people and technology needed to help customers minimize downtime and focus on patient care. "When it comes to keeping critical imaging equipment operational, there's no 'one size fits all' solution," she said. "We're committed to offering whatever levels of support a customer wants, from remote fixes to depot repair to on-site service - or any combination of these alternatives."

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries.

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