In today’s fast-paced scientific landscape, the tools used in laboratories play a critical role in ensuring accuracy and efficiency. To keep pace with the latest advancements and meet increasing demand, investing in new equipment is crucial for staying current and ensuring the laboratory’s long-term success. While deciding which equipment to invest in is an initial priority, ongoing service and maintenance packages are key to extending the lifespan of the equipment and are an important consideration for any purchase.
Fixing Problems – The Importance of Servicing Packages
Maintenance packages offer peace of mind that damaged or faulty equipment is addressed promptly, minimising any downtime or disruption. An estimated 1-4 hours of productivity are lost per day due to unplanned maintenance and repairs as a result of equipment breakdowns in histology labs. This downtime has a drastic impact on the number of samples processed and could see an annual delay of over 2,000 samples in labs that turn over an average of 200 samples per day.
In addition, and in line with the RCPath Key Performance Indicators (KPI), 80% of diagnostic cases should be reported within 7 calendar days and 90% of all routine specimens within 10 calendar days. Maintaining these turnaround targets (TATs) requires a robust backup service to meet TAT standards and avoid any disruption to clinical decision-making.
Ongoing support, servicing and annual checkups play an important role in ensuring your equipment continues to perform at the highest standard and complies with certain accreditation bodies. The fixed cost nature of these packages enables laboratories to manage their budgets more effectively without the risk of surprise expenses and overtime expenditures to recoup lost working hours.
Reliability – An Experienced Team
At Solmedia, our team of UK-based engineers are histology equipment specialists, offering in-depth product knowledge and technical support both remotely and in-person. Our central location allows engineers to attend urgent repairs in a timely manner to keep your workflow on track. While we aim to complete repairs onsite, equipment that requires additional attention will be returned to our workshop for further investigation and diagnosis. We will keep you up-to-date on the progress of repairs, working flexibly to accommodate your workplace schedule.
Histology equipment can break down, but frequent breakdowns are not typical with routine servicing and preventative maintenance. There are a number of pieces of equipment that can stall productivity and cause significant disruption if a fault arises. Tissue processors, microtomes and cryostats are important pieces of equipment within any histopathology lab and any failures due to mechanical wear, blockages or reagent contamination can halt sample processing. At the same time, errors in cassette and slide printers can lead to labelling delays and, potentially, misidentification. Identifying essential equipment within your lab can help to determine which level of servicing you require.
Support – Tailored Packages
Solmedia offer four bespoke packages, each carefully crafted to meet your servicing and technical maintenance requirements: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum.
Our service packages are unique to your laboratory and tailored to your equipment’s specifications. We aim to create the optimal package for your equipment based on your frequency of use and processes to optimise its performance, extend its lifetime and maintain consistent results.
We promise that with each package, we will deliver premium care with minimal disruption to your workflow. This includes breakdown cover and genuine manufacturer parts and fittings.
“We use Solmedia for the service and repair of our tissue processors and are very impressed with the level of expertise of the engineer and the speed at which they come to site when required. We always recommend Solmedia to colleagues and will continue to do so.”
Medina – Pathology & Diagnostic Labs, Royal Vet College
At Solmedia, we pride ourselves in our exceptional customer service, from initial enquiry to post-install service and maintenance, sharing knowledge to assist you in making an informed decision.
For further information on our Service and Maintenance packages, please get in touch.