Siemens Healthineers' Predictive Maintenance Strategy
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Industry 4.0 technology is transforming field service the world over, and its implementation is enabling work to be carried out in more effective and efficient ways than ever before.
The healthcare industry is no exception, with digital tech empowering providers to improve clinical outcomes, patient experience, and the general quality of the provision of medical services. Connected devices can communicate with one another and with central data centers, allowing for the 24/7 monitoring of patient conditions and the supervision of treatment schedule adherence.
Not only is the Internet of Things helping healthcare providers deliver better experiences for their patients, but it's also helping the people responsible for the maintenance and repair of medical devices carry out their work in new and better ways.
This has led to the rise in a concept known as predictive maintenance - and Siemens Healthineers is one brand making the most of it.
Siemens Healthineers
Traditionally, field service providers would have had to wait for a client to notice an issue with a device before taking any action. The client would contact the field service provider and arrange for an engineer to come out and attend to the problem. This is what is known as "reactive maintenance". Following this, regular service schedules gave rise to "active maintenance", which allowed problems to be spotted earlier.
However, the introduction of connected Industry 4.0 technologies like the Internet of Things has allowed field service providers to deliver a proactive service offering.
IoT-connected sensors built into medical devices enable practitioners to access a constant stream of data concerning the ongoing condition of the patients using them. They also allow field service providers to monitor the condition of the devices themselves. When sensors detect that a component is failing, a notification can be sent automatically to the field service office, so an engineer can be sent out to repair or replace the component.
This means that devices can be maintained, and problems addressed, before they cause the device to fail entirely. In most industries, device and machine failure can cause production to grind to a halt, resulting in lost revenue and business opportunities. The failure of medical devices is much more serious. It can lead to a decline in clinical outcomes, patient health, and in some cases even death.
"Siemens Healthineers' culture is of pioneers and engineers focused on extracting value through answers from a data value chain including sales, machine, service parts, technician, and process data," said the company. "Siemens Healthineers aggregates this global data for data scientists and business analysts to identify trends. They use machine learning to develop models to constantly understand maintenance trends, service part errors, training issues, faulty supplier parts and to improve their services offerings."
Artificial intelligence can take the data from such IoT-powered devices and use it to build models of "predictive maintenance". This allows field service providers to spot patterns of failures and breakdowns and develop solutions - such as using alternative components - to improve the ongoing production and development of medical devices.
Predictive Maintenance
One way in which Siemens Healthineers is driving predictive maintenance forward for the industry is through a fresh partnership with SAS. The collaboration has allowed the healthcare medical device provider to develop a new platform named MindSphere for data analysis and predictive maintenance.
"Users will gain access to industry-leading SAS advanced and predictive analytics in MindSphere, which can accelerate the adoption of machine learning and artificial intelligence in Internet of Things environments," said SAS. "Increasing productivity and reducing operational risk through powerful predictive and prescriptive maintenance and optimized asset performance management are just some of the ways these new solutions can benefit customers working in a range of industries including manufacturing, healthcare, energy & utilities, smart factories, transportation and automotive."
The MindSphere platform will enable Siemens Healthineers to offer an even more superior field service offering than it presently does. With unprecedented data processing capabilities, ever more sophisticated predictive models can be created, taking predictive maintenance to an entirely new level.
"SAS is a recognized world-leader in advanced analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. We are excited to leverage their analytics in MindSphere," said Executive Vice President and General Manager of Siemens MindSphere, Stephen Bashada. "The combination of Siemens' deep industrial domain knowledge with SAS' deep analytics knowledge is a powerful step forward for IoT."
Final Thoughts
Predictive maintenance is making field service a more proactive and efficient industry thanks to Industry 4.0 technology such as the Internet of Things. With its powerful new MindSphere platform, Siemens Healthineers will be able to offer an increasingly comprehensive service to those healthcare providers who use its medical devices - improving clinical outcomes and saving lives while it's at it.
You can hear Siemens Healthineers Senior Director of Services for Western Zone, Jon Matthews, speak at Field Service Medical 2020, taking place in February at the Rancho Bernardo Inn, San Diego, CA.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.