QUESTIONSANDANSWERS DR.
MOHSEN SHAFAEI
Vice President Healthcare Diagnostics, Middle East and Africa, Siemens LLC
Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics is a supplier of in vitro diagnostics, providing healthcare professionals in hospital, reference, and physician office laboratories and point- of-care settings with the vital information required to accurately diagnose, treat, and monitor patients. We spoke to Dr Mohsen on the back of the Medlab Exhibition and Congress during Arab Health to find out more about Siemens Diagnostics and their plans for developing laboratory medicine in the Middle East.
Q. Can you tell us a bit about any recent diagnostic products launched by Siemens? A. Siemens offers a comprehensive disease state menu, which is available for screening, diagnosis and monitoring of different disease states, e.g. Centaur systems. We are committed to continuing the expansion of our solutions offerings through target assay development to meet the evolving needs of the laboratories, but also through targeted and continued product improvements to always maintain the best in quality which our customers have now come to expect from us. For example, we currently released a new formulation of our
combo HIV assay. The ADVIA Centaur HIV Ag/Ab Combo (CHIV) assay is an in vitro diagnostic immunoassay for the simultaneous qualitative detection of human immunodeficiency virus p24 antigen and antibodies, to human immunodeficiency viruses type 1 (including group ‘O’) and type 2, in serum and plasma to aid in the diagnosis of HIV infection, using the ADVIA Centaur System. Also, our new ADVIA Centaur HBSAg II assay can be used in conjunction with other serological and clinical information to diagnose individuals with acute or chronic hepatitis B infection. The assay may also be used to screen for hepatitis B infection in pregnant women to identify neonates who are at risk of acquiring hepatitis B during the prenatal period. Our Point of Care (POC) solutions being launched in the region include the Rapid Point 500 (POC – Blood Gas), and the Clinitek Novus (urinalysis).
020 MEDLAB MAGAZINE ISSUE 1 2012
Q. What products are you working on at the moment to increase workflow and patient safety in the medical laboratory? A. Understanding and adapting to the needs of today’s laboratory requirements is of prime impor tance. In today’s healthcare environment, workload increases while processes and workflow become more and more complex. VersaCell is a simple and easy way to optimize and streamline the workflow in the serology lab. By consolidating the laboratory workload, laboratories are freeing up FTEs to perform additional value-added tasks. The technology also enables laboratories to automate manual testing, assuring the quality of test results. VersaCell consolidates routine and specialty ID analyzers onto a
unique platform, while eliminating time-consuming and error-prone pre-sor ting (triage) and routing to separate analyzers. This unique technology enables the entire ID workload to be loaded in one place, and minimises staffing for routine lab, including MRSA, KPCR and liver fibrosis. Increasing demands for healthcare services brings its challenges: increasing accessibility to healthcare, improving quality of care to patients and lowering overall healthcare costs. By focusing on early diagnosis and intervention, orientation towards disease state, knowledge-driven support in the decision-making process and
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