How one smart interface saves time and leads to smoother processesMore efficient service management for imaging systems at St. Jansdal

Siemens Healthineers has built an interface with IFS Ultimo for St. Jansdal Hospital in Harderwijk that allows IFS Ultimo and teamplay Fleet applications to communicate with each other. This provides for more efficient management and monitoring of the imaging systems serviced by Siemens Healthineers.

“All data is now always up to date, service files are complete, and information can be easily exchanged,” said Gerwin Vos, Head of Medical Technology at St. Jansdal Hospital in Harderwijk. Like many other hospitals, St. Jansdal uses IFS Ultimo as its asset management system to service and maintain all equipment, including the imaging systems serviced by Siemens Healthineers.

“Previously, whenever any of the systems or devices were serviced by Siemens Healthineers, the work was recorded in teamplay Fleet, and we received an email notification. Then we had to enter that manually into IFS Ultimo,” Vos explained.

“This process was time consuming, and data was not always complete. So, we wondered if there wasn’t a smarter and better way this could be done.”

Vos, together with the Head of the Radiology Department, formulated the request for help and asked Siemens Healthineers and IFS Ultimo if they would be willing to share fault and maintenance information so that both applications could easily communicate with each other. Thanks to intensive cooperation between St. Jansdal Hospital, IFS Ultimo, Siemens Healthineers Netherlands, and Siemens Healthineers headquarters in Germany, an interface was built. This interface, known as teamplay Fleet Connect, now enables both applications to link and share service data.

“The interface means huge time savings in our processes,” Vos says. “Our technicians now have much less red tape to deal with, meaning their time is managed much more efficiently. It also makes the work much more enjoyable.” 

Now that the data link is working, the fault detection and planning processes are also being gradually aligned and set up.

In cases of faults, there are not many changes for equipment users or service technicians.

“Although users do have a much quicker understanding of a technician's feedback with respect to a particular system issue,” Vos noted. “Quality assurance and reporting are also better facilitated through this interface.” As before, users report faults in IFS Ultimo and our medical technology service technician resolves the issues. If this fails, then the ticket is passed via the teamplay Fleet Connect interface to teamplay Fleet and by this to the service organization from Siemens Healthineers. When the fault has been resolved by the service technician, they then report this on teamplay Fleet, and this also becomes immediately visible to St. Jansdal users and technicians on IFS Ultimo.

“Thanks to a bi-directional connection, service data in both applications is always up to date. Users have immediate insights into service technician feedback in relation to calls. Duplicate and manual records are eliminated, increasing speed, quality, and reliability. Moreover, all data are available in real time for audits, for example.”

Siemens Healthineers is the preferred supplier for all imaging systems at St. Jansdal. A 12-year service contract was not actually the reason why Vos invested in digitization and data exchange, but rather the intensive nature of their cooperation. “Because when you work intensively with a supplier, there are always areas where you are able to make improvements. For example, how many employees are involved in the process and how many operations must be performed? If you can optimize that, then all the investment of time and energy is worth it.”

St. Jansdal can justifiably be called a pioneer when it comes to supporting the flow of digital traffic between the hospital and its suppliers.

Vos expects that other hospitals also have an underlying need to standardize and optimize their service processes. Vos: “We’ve made a start and I expect these types of interface to take off in the longer term. To achieve this, however, suppliers have to be willing to share their critical data with other systems, such as with IFS Ultimo in this case. Data transparency is essential if we’re to move forward.”