CHICAGO — It's like a 911 call center on steroids for the diagnostics industry. But rather than responding to emergencies, it continuously tracks and predicts problems with lab instruments before they occur.

Ortho Clinical Diagnostics (OCD; Raritan, New Jersey) debuted its new Remote Monitoring Center (RMC; Rochester, New York) at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry's (AACC; Washington) annual meeting this week.

"Lab downtime is a very significant issue. Even if a lab is down just 1% of the time in a year, that could be hundreds of hours. I wouldn't want my family member to be unable to get appropriate test results in a timely manner," Troy Taylor, worldwide VP, Customer Technical Service at OCD told Medical Device Daily.

That and the cost of dispatching service engineers onsite were the genesis of the RMC. Onsite visits to remove a jammed slide or other problems great and small can be an expensive way to support technology. Since the RMC went live in February, about 1,600 instruments have been connected worldwide.

"E-connectivity for service and support has been around for a while and it's a nice engineering tool," Taylor said. "But the RMC automates the process and provides a predictive and proactive monitoring service."

As part of a demonstration of the RMC in the conference exhibition hall, computers showed how a two-way broadband Internet connection allows OCD to automatically monitor diagnostics tools and alert OCD staff if it appears something isn't right, up to a month before the device might actually break down.

But it's not all computer oriented or automated. A roomful of people operate the RMC fulltime in what is the first command center in Rochester. Other centers are set to open in Strasbourg, France and at an as-yet undetermined site somewhere in the Asia-Pacific region.

"We had all of this great data via e-connectivity already. But rather than being reactive to instrumentation, what if we could look ahead to alert labs earlier that something might go wrong or to provide reminders for service and maintenance?" Taylor said.

The RMC service is provided to OCD customers at no added cost and includes:

• Automatic two-way data exchange provides the ability to automatically send and receive data securely from the technical support team at the RMC.

• Assay and equipment predictive alerts are automatically sent to the technical support team when specific events or statistical trends have been observed.

• Remote diagnostic operation allows the technical support team to access the instrument remotely, with oversight from the instrument operator, so that technical challenges can be solved more efficiently.

• System upgrades can be performed so the OCD's Vitros Immunoassay Systems are running as efficiently as possible with the newest available technology.

It took four years and undisclosed investment to develop the predictive software that's at the core of RMC to offer this new service for free. Taylor said the return on investment to OCD is multifold, starting with reduced costs associated with onsite tech support as well as perceived value of a proactive support system to customers.

Every Vitros instrument that is securely connected to the RMC sends a stream of data, alerting customer technical service specialists and engineers to its operating status.

Taylor said it's a sea change from the old break-fix model to a new predict and maintain model.

While technical support specialists and engineers can perform remote system analysis, as well as monitor, review and upgrade system configuration, data and performance information, the RMC won't totally preclude onsite visits.

e-Connectivity technology is available to customers using Vitros systems, including: the Vitros 5600 Integrated System, Vitros 3600 Immunodiagnostic System, Vitros 5.1 and the Vitros ECi/ECiQ.

The Vitros 3600 is a high-capacity immunoassay system with a menu of 47 immunoassays, covering disease states such as cardiology, oncology, endocrinology, infectious disease, thyroid, metabolic conditions and anemia. The Vitros 5600 integrates clinical chemistry and immunoassay testing on one platform.

Taylor said the company intends to move the monitoring technology across a variety of other platforms from hematology equipment to lab inventory control.

"A lot of companies are doing monitoring," he said. "We're different because of predictive alerts. Nobody else is in this space."

In other news from Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, the FDA approved the Vitros Anti-HCV assay for use on the Vitros 5600 and 3600 systems.

Michael Samoszuk, MD, chief medical officer, OCD, said, "Clinicians can now test for hepatitis C as a part of their routine assay testing on the Vitros systems."

Results are available in 55 minutes.

Since the introduction of the Vitros systems in the last year, the company said it has released more than 100 assays.