GE Healthcare supports customer uptime via remote services

• When disaster strikes, the GE family plays a critical role
• This year’s World Health Day all about safety and readiness of health facilities

PARIS, FRANCE.- Health centers and their staff are critical lifelines for vulnerable people in disasters - treating injuries, preventing illnesses and caring for people’s health needs. GE Healthcare is committed to helping deliver the level of availability customers require. Today, this year’s World Health Day focuses on the resilience and safety of health facilities and the health workers who treat those affected by emergencies.

GE Healthcare’s remote service technologies are essential in keeping healthcare equipment running. Around the world, at the company’s network of technical services centers, expert engineers are available to diagnose and fix issues remotely. Across Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and Asia, there are more than 3,100 GE Healthcare field service engineers, as well as 230 online service engineers. On average, 50% of service issues can be resolved remotely within one hour.

This in-demand service relies on the exceptional technology incorporated into GE Healthcare’s imaging equipment, which enables online service engineers to interrogate the fault log within the system’s computer, diagnose the source of the problem and, in most cases, offer an immediate solution.

Within EMEA and Asia, there are more than 19,000 GE Healthcare diagnostic imaging systems connected via broadband. If a problem requires the attention of a service engineer, the good news is that they will arrive on-site already informed about the likely source of the problem and prepared to handle it immediately.

Jan De Witte, Vice President, General Manager, Services, EMEA, GE Healthcare, said: “Customers can request support from our engineers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our job is to provide our customers with peace of mind, a continuity of care, so that they can focus on their patients. This peace of mind is the branding and our vision of what we de­liver in services.”

During and after storms like Hurricane Katrina, for example, GE Healthcare technicians and service engineers work hand-in-hand with hospital staff to help maintain service levels, even after losing power and taking on water. GE Healthcare employees are onsite to examine equipment, provide generators, satellite phones, trailers and replacement or mobile diagnostic imaging and monitoring equipment.

During the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake in May 2008, GE Healthcare’s Services team in China responded quickly and efficiently to reach as many hospitals as possible across the region and ensure GE Healthcare equipment was in good working order. All service requests from the area were set as top priority to ensure the best possible availability of support. GE Healthcare’s team reached the Dujiangjian People’s Hospital within 36 hours of the earthquake to check GE Healthcare Magnetic Resonance (MR), Computed Tomography (CT) and X-ray equipment.

Dr. Zhong Yongzhong, Chief Radiologist, Dujiangyan People’s Hospital said: “With GE Healthcare’s support, I could focus completely on helping more patients who suffered from the earthquake.”

GE Healthcare’s remote service technologies save time and help reduce tedious, unproductive work. That means customers have more time to provide high-quality patient care, and our service team has more time to address customer’s most critical operating issues.

The remote service technologies GE Healthcare offers are part of a complete program of maintenance, monitoring and repair, delivered by online experts with the focus on:

· Protecting their diagnostic imaging devices around the clock

· Maximizing system uptime

· Protecting diagnostic image quality

· Training them in the latest imaging tools and techniques

“We know that customer’s imaging devices are critical to their activity: this is why GE Healthcare Service is entirely geared towards delivering a world-class service, today and tomorrow,” added De Witte.