DAMMAM, 27 October — Today’s medical equipment business is not limited solely to marketing. What is of vital importance is providing critical support services round-the-clock to health care centers performing diagnosis and life-saving efforts. Philips Medical Systems Saudi Arabia (PMSSA) is one such company. Aside from making available its support services both in terms of engineering and rolling stock, the company continues to invest in the Kingdom in line with its Saudization policy.

Moukhtar Tayara, general manager of PMSSA, Saudi Arabia and North Middle East, said last week in an interview with Arab News: “We’re hiring Saudi engineers as trainees and sending them to our facilities in the United States and Europe, especially Holland and Germany. This is turning out to be an excellent investment for us. Additionally, we’re investing in engineers in hospitals who are involved in maintenance and operation of high-tech instruments. And we’ve designed a system to be responsive to needs of hospitals 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Since health care facilities work without a break throughout the year, they need dependable support service for their medical equipment in critical times. We’ve developed and specialized the system so our equipment in various health care facilities can be monitored and corrective steps taken ahead of a possible breakdown.”

Tayara said PMSSA was dedicated to bringing better health care to the Kingdom’s citizens and residents through its ongoing investment. “We’re mainly in diagnostic imaging, our strong areas being radiology, computed tomography (CT), MR and catheterization laboratory (cathlab). With our acquisition of companies, we’ve become strong in ultrasound in which we have a niche market and also in ECG and nuclear medicine. So we’ve a substantial range of products and are leaders in cathlab, ultrasound, nuclear medicine, CT, radiology and MR, mainly cardiac MR. This means we’re strong in cathlab and cardiology. In fact, we now enjoy a 50-52 percent share in the cathlab industry.”

Tayara, who was accompanied by other executives including T.L.V. Kumar, Dubai-based vice president and regional director, Middle East and Africa, and Mustafa Khalil, Riyadh-based technical manager, said Philips had established its own customer support division in the Kingdom with offices in Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province. “We’re training engineers in our offices in the Kingdom and abroad. We’re using our logistic systems for call dispatching, call management and call screening. We’ve a strong logistic system that allows us to monitor the history of the equipment, when it was installed, what service has been done on it and what is required to be done in a bid to take preventive and corrective steps ahead of its likely breakdown. Which means the uptime of the equipment will always be high.”

While Philips is handling aftersales service, it has established a relationship with Al-Faisaliah Medical and Measurement Systems (FMMS) to deal with the distribution of the multinational’s medical equipment across the Kingdom. “Philips has been successfully working with FMMS, an established company with strong financial background and excellent team of skilled professionals who are dedicated to promoting the diagnostic imaging product range of medical equipment and services to the Saudi health care sector,” Tayara said, adding that PMSSA operated as a private company with full foreign investment to provide support services as permitted under a Saudi foreign investment law approved in May 2001.

“Together with Al-Faisaliah,” Kumar pointed out, “we’ve a perfect set-up and a win-win situation. Philips has an edge over its two major competitors in terms of products.

Our products are very good, we’ve excellent tubes, and in many areas we are leaders. In technology we have leadership. Secondly, we have products that are less than two years old. This shows they are fast moving items. We have to invest a lot to come out with good products. We are strong in hardware and as for software, we work in partnership with others through our centers across the world.”

Echoing Tayara’s statement, Kumar said: “From the Kingdom’s point of view, our strategy is clear. Medical equipment business is not like consumer electronics where a person buys on brand loyalty or popularity. This is life saving.

The product’s uptime is important, the product’s ability to deliver what it is designed for is important. In both these respects, service is crucial. So we took the decision to invest in our own company in the Kingdom, and this is an ongoing investment.”