by
John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | August 15, 2022
From the August 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
New players, such as private equity firms, will continue taking up more stakes in the market, making it even more competitive, according to Philips’ Stevens. Meanwhile, remote monitoring and preventive maintenance solutions will also continue to grow, with healthcare organizations looking to decrease downtime as much as possible.
“More of our upgrades are being done remotely and off-hours for the customer to ensure that they can maximize the use of the equipment during hours of operation to care for patients,” said Stevens. “Using this remote service program, we can handle multiple upgrades from a single command center rather than sending an FSE to each individual site to update software.”
Cybersecurity protection will also grow as a demand, along with the FDA already asking Congress for more explicit power to implement requirements for protecting medical devices. Both the House and the Senate are set to vote on the Protecting and Transforming Cyber Health Care (PATCH) Act, which would require manufacturers to provide critical cybersecurity safeguards and design, develop, and maintain updates and patches throughout the life cycle of their devices.
The need to recruit and find new ways of training younger generations on how to service medical equipment will also be a priority. In addition, the “right to repair” debate will continue to be a focal point in the industry that will affect training, as well as access to affordable servicing of medical equipment.
Effective servicing of any kind is a two-way responsibility between service providers and healthcare organizations, according to Goryl. Servicers, OEM or otherwise, must be able to adapt to the changing landscape and demands among healthcare organizations, while medical practices must communicate where they require the most help from these entities.
"I encourage all customers and HTM in-house customers to be upfront and honest about their challenges, so that we can continue to establish a level of trust and identify effective ways that we can progress and succeed together,” he said.
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