Enhanced real-time monitoring for Siemens molecular imaging systems

Whether detecting cancer, heart or brain imaging, renal exams or bone scans, physicians must be able to rely on their PET-CT or SPECT-CT scanners. Any system downtime costs molecular imaging (MI) customers significantly, as an expensive radiopharmaceutical dose must be ordered specifically for each patient in advance of the examination. In order to help assure the highest availability of the scanners, Siemens has extended its Guardian Program to a variety of MI systems. Proactive online monitoring in real-time now is available for the MI system families Biograph mCT, Biograph TruePoint, Symbia S and Symbia T.

If parameters exceed or undershoot defined critical levels, the system will proactively send a message to the Siemens Service Center. A predefined high-speed support and repair process is set into motion with clearly defined reaction and repair times as well as improved spare parts availability. In addition, a service expert will guide the customer through the first critical phase and help re-establish the system’s availability as fast as possible. For Guardian customers this means high system reliability and availability, reduction of unscheduled downtimes, proactive rescheduling of patients and staff, and potentially less revenue loss because downtimes can be planned ahead of time.

As an additional offering, the Siemens Guardian Program including TubeGuard can now predict the majority of all potential CT tube failures within the Siemens MI system BiographmCT. More than ten sensors proactively monitor the tube functions via real-time data flow with Siemens Remote Service (SRS).Tube exchanges can be scheduled in advance and unplanned downtime can be avoided. The CT tube is absolutely vital to system availability and image quality. The tube can fail – with no clear warning signs for the customer.

The Siemens Healthcare Sector is one of the world's largest suppliers to the healthcare industry and a trendsetter in medical imaging, laboratory diagnostics, medical information technology and hearing aids. Siemens offers its customers products and solutions for the entire range of patient care from a single source – from prevention and early detection to diagnosis, and on to treatment and aftercare. By optimizing clinical workflows for the most common diseases, Siemens also makes healthcare faster, better and more cost-effective. Siemens Healthcare employs some 48,000 employees worldwide and operates around the world. In fiscal year 2009 (to September 30), the Sector posted revenue of 11.9 billion euros and profit of around 1.5 billion euros.

The here mentioned products are not commercially available in all countries. Due to regulatory reasons the future availability in any country cannot be guaranteed. Please contact your local Siemens organization for further details.