Increasing health care demands calls for a connected solution
Sysmex, a manufacturer of blood and urinalysis medical equipment, teamed with Thingworx to connect its health care products and bring added services to its offerings, according to a case study provided by Thingworx.
The healthcare equipment manufacturer sells to 48 companies in 29 countries and distributes and supports automated in vitro diagnostic hematology, coagulation and urinalysis analyzers as well as reagents and information systems for laboratories and health care facilities throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Sysmex began connecting its products in 2005, implementing basic communication to its field instruments for remote monitoring. This first step helped increase up-time and service efficiency for approximately 66% of its total customer base.
According to Sysmex, the company realized the intense competition in the medical device market, especially in the U.S., which demanded a higher level of customer service and internal operational efficiency.
Looking to Thingworx for an answer
Leaders at Sysmex understood that the key to business transformation is being able to unlock the value in the data it is collecting. So it took the next step by selecting the ThingWorx platform, while providing the necessary security and auditing capabilities. The ability to integrate ThingWorx with other enterprise systems, such as customer relationship management, places the “internet of things” platform at the core of Sysmex’s integrated connected business infrastructure, according to Thingworx.
“ThingWorx is touching every aspect of our business. It is transforming the way our business works,” said Steve Postma, director of technical service systems at Sysmex.
With ThingWorx, Sysmex was able to achieve “next-generation” service and connected product capabilities, including:
- Direct, real-time instrument connection for delivering next-generation service and support;
- Rapid problem resolution through enhanced collaboration and better use of remote and systems data; and
- Ability to rapidly build value-added applications
“If a customer gets created in our CRM system, or one of our instruments gets shipped to a customer, that data automatically gets created in our ThingWorx platform,” said Steve Postma, director of technical service systems at Sysmex.
Sysmex has now been putting its energy into value added applications that utilize remote instrument data. The company is able to deliver value-added applications that pull out instrument data in real time and integrate that data into Sysmex’s existing business processes.
Within the first few months, Sysmex was able to build its first application using ThingWorx, and its business has progressed forward since then, according to Thingworx.
The IoT impact
Today, the instrument data that Sysmex collects is having an impact in several different areas of its business. Customers now expect to see improved equipment up-time because Sysmex is able to achieve faster decision response time. Customers also see improved labor utilization through collaborative information exchange.
The data Sysmex is collecting is integrated into its entire business. For example, capturing cycle count on an instrument is not only being used for tracking evidence of required maintenance, but also used to trigger automatic consumables replenishment and tracking contract adherence, as well as to offer innovative new usage-based billing agreements and tracking how customers are using their instruments, providing potential up-sell opportunities.
