Spotlight LIMS & Lab Automation
Remote Services: From Reactive to Predictive Support Mark Anthony Wheeler, Divisional Vice President of Global Services for Abbott Diagnostics
Laboratory diagnostic instrumentation has long been critical to delivering accurate and consistent results. Connecting instruments to the Internet to deliver remote diagnostics and services has proven to be a valuable conduit to deliver prompt service and enhanced operator satisfaction. Instrument connectivity provides real-time access to instrument performance, improving issue investigation, root cause analysis and resolution. Remote diagnostics has a direct impact on enhancing laboratory productivity. With the ability to review data instantly and use of automated tools with the ability to interpret instrument logs, service engineers can promote effective troubleshooting leading to decreased resolution time. Data mining tools allow for the statistical evaluation of data and provide important insights on assay performance and lot-to-lot variation on a real-time basis. Laboratory technicians meanwhile can avert the need to wait for a service engineer’s visit and can expect faster resolution of their issues. Smarter integration of instrumentation software and remote diagnostics can help track critical instrument error conditions instantly, allowing proactive response from service engineers.
Instrument information can be vital for laboratory managers as well. Through a customer portal, customers may view their instruments’ performance. Key instrument maintenance and historical information can be made available to the customer, providing them a retention mechanism for certification agencies. The portal can also incorporate reports to assess laboratory workflow, review assay efficiency, such as the number of patient tests released vs. overall tests run, amongst other value-added features for the laboratory operators.
As a critical mass of the instruments get connected, organisations can extend their remote service capabilities by leveraging trending tools to move towards predictive support, which extend to the customer. Predictive support involves identifying patterns of deterioration and taking appropriate steps toward addressing the situation before the customer experiences downtime.
Reaching critical mass of the connected instruments: Ramping up towards connecting existing instruments in the field can be a task. Identifying local champions, percolating the training, and staying on course by adapting and incorporating lessons from the field can help increase the proportion of instruments with remote connections.
Getting Customer Approval for Remote Services: Remote services require changing the mindset of both the customer and the service and support organisation. The current competitive environment and challenges are similar for the instrument vendors and the laboratory organisations. Both professions share similar compulsions and produce quality results to remain competitive. Following are the key driving factors for today’s lab operators and how the remote services can benefit them:
• Limited availability of qualified staff - Provides the ability to train remotely. Provides assistance to those on off shifts, and weekends, where the needs are critical
Remote Service Stages
Remote service adoption by an organisation can take time to implement. Key elements of embracing a successful remote service strategy include: building robust remote service infrastructure; developing seamless instrument integration;, training for the involved parties and their IT organisation support; establishing and maintaining connectivity; incorporating remote troubleshooting within the existing customer support; and developing tools to help reach quicker resolution.
The key stages in the evolution of remote services are: 1) developing a coherent organisational support: 2) building the necessary technical know-how: 3) understanding the concerns and developing customer collateral: 4) reaching the critical mass of connected instruments: 5) showing value to the customer and building support within the organisation: and 6) delivering value added services by showing real value to the customers.
Some of the challenges and suggestions include the following:
Building organisational support: The up-front capital outlay to build the remote services team, technology and necessary infrastructure may require a leap of faith for the organisation’s leadership. Competitive differentiation and the real opportunity to provide superior customer support can provide the necessary impetus to build the support.
Integration with legacy instruments: Delivering a compelling remote diagnostic solution requires interfacing with the instrument software to catch messages and log files. Key challenge to integrate with the instrument is that the system’s development and lifespan often can run into 5-10 years or more, which necessitate integrating remote service technology with legacy instruments, which were not developed for remote troubleshooting. With better collaboration the instrumentation and remote service teams can work together to deliver incremental releases with compelling remote service solution.
Addressing customers’ questions: Strong encryption and strict compliance with local privacy and security laws is paramount. Securing the connected instrument from hacking and viruses is also critical, which can be achieved by using hardware and software combinations with Firewalls, VPN tunnelling. Compliance certificates, endorsements from security agencies can help win over customers and their IT teams in further allaying their concerns.
• Increased test volume and test menu - Increased diagnostic capability, decreasing resolution time
• Pressure to maintain costs / decreased Reimbursement - Decreased downtime - Decreased waste
• Decentralised testing - Offers ability to assess instruments across multiple locations, despite the distance between labs
- Ability to determine the bottlenecks and plan the resources better
• Increased competition - Decreased service costs - Offer workflow analysis for optimal resource management
• Focus on customer satisfaction / faster turn around time - Decreased turnaround time, increased ability to view lab results
Developing Remote Service Centric Organisation: The service and support organisation hitherto has been programmed to receive the customer call, gather detailed information from the customer, spend time reconstructing the scenario and reproducing the issue. Very often this results in escalating to the next level and dispatching a service engineer to the customer location to further understand and address the issue. The service visit may or may not result in the fix and may require a subsequent visit with a right part.
Remote diagnostics makes most current information from the instrument available to the service personnel. Key skills required by the support folks for best usage of remote troubleshooting capabilities include understanding what information is relevant to the type of call and how to interpret that information. Availability of remote troubleshooting tools can further enhance the resolution rate by first contact support professionals, particularly if the tool analyses the current logs and can narrow down the errors.
Developing remote troubleshooting capabilities for the service and support team may involve training and availability of an organisation’s support personnel to go deeper into the instrument or assay issues by combining their instrument experience with remote troubleshooting tools.
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