MEDICAL & HEALTHCARE

Kameda General Hospital is working to further enhance its medical services, which place emphasis on the patient, and it has incorporated the DIT-1000 bedside information terminal in 300 rooms in its private inpatient room facility, K-Tower. This multi-function information terminal provides TV viewing, Internet browsing, food selection, and viewing of electronic medical records connected to the hospital information network.

Shin-ichiro Miyake, Chief Director of Miyake Medical Institute Group places importance on the hospitality of in-patients and saw the need to incorporate bedside computers. However, it was difficult to find the ideal system. Then we came across the Contec DIT-1000. The level of expectation for this information terminal and Contec are at a high.

As part of a corporate wide initiative, Beckman Coulter, Inc. was committed to lowering the cost of their diagnostic instruments, which include 18 product lines manufactured in three different locations in the U.S. The company wanted to use fewer components in each device, pay less for the components they used, and reduce the size of the instruments to a small form factor chassis. When contacted by BCI, long-time supplier Contec suggested that they not only look for fewer and less costly components but ways to reduce the number of configurations across their product lines. This would allow BCI to significantly reduce the cost of changes and revalidation.

Lookout Worldwide sought help with the design, development, and production of its alarm system for boats, vessels, and industrial equipment. Its unique Ambush alarm system would not only help owners recover items when stolen but would include breakthrough prevention capability by measuring much smaller changes in alignment and location than was possible from GPS monitoring alone, alerting authorities before vessels had moved more than a few feet. But the Ambush system would require a combination of high end communications, including GSM radio technology, iridium satellite technology, and digital compass technology, along with a GPS system, accelerometers, firmware, and software to allow the system to interface with a user friendly online database. The key challenge was to put all of this technology together in a small package and keep manufacturing costs down, while ensuring the highest possible standards of performance and reliability. “Although we were offering a product that does more than any other on the market, we knew it still had to be priced competitively,” said Lookout Worldwide’s Vice President and Marketing Manager, Ernie Sosa. “And it had to perform at the highest level. We chose Contec after visiting their manufacturing facility and seeing how dedicated they are to quality.”

Despite its long history of excellence and innovation, MTS Medication Technologies’ reputation was in jeopardy. Its third-party provider’s inability to meet MTS’ stringent quality standards was resulting in disappointed customers and missed sales goals. Frustrated with the existing cabinets, customers were unwilling to purchase MTS’ latest offerings, which impacted the company’s sales, said Brett Smith, Director of Procurement, Purchasing and Supply Chain. “It slowed down our marketing and sales efforts,” he noted. Fed up with these unacceptable results and the impact these flaws were having on MTS’ bottom line and reputation, MTS considered building the cabinets in-house. But that would mean hiring people, adding expensive resources and shifting MTS’ focus away from its core competencies, Smith said.