By Lori Sichtermann

An Interview With Stephen Wasserman, Group VP, Diagnostic Systems Group

In today’s business environment where consolidation is increasing the size of businesses, it is difficult to imagine supersized companies giving customers personalized attention. But Stephen Wasserman, vice president of Olympus America Inc’s Diagnostic Systems Group, says that in the 85 years since the company was founded, it has become one of the giants in the industry because of the attention it pays to customers. Clinical Lab Products recently spoke with Wasserman about customer focus and the knowledge that the company has gained by listening to its customers.

CLP: What kinds of products does Olympus offer for the laboratory professional?
Stephen Wasserman: In addition to our lab automation, patient safety, blood banking, and microscope product lines, we offer a broad line of standardized chemistry immuno systems for the clinical laboratory. We have four models, starting from the AU400e, which performs 400 to 800 tests per hour, up to the AU5400, which runs as many as 6,600 tests per hour. Each of these systems has the same user interface, and they share a majority of the same parts. Additionally, they have the same reference ranges, and they use the same calibration settings, reagents, and reagent containers.

The versatility of these systems benefits the customer in that if a facility plans to share staff between departments or locations, staff members can operate analyzers throughout the laboratory network. That’s what we mean by standardization.

Olympus also has the broadest test menu available. With 122 test methods, our customers have been able to significantly reduce the number of workstations in the laboratory, thereby saving cost and time. The OLA2500 lab automation system addresses preanalytical tube sorting and aliquoting, which consumes 65% of the workload in the average lab, and which also is the most error-prone area in the laboratory.

CLP: The company frequently uses the phrase, “Your Vision, Our Future”; specifically, what is meant by this statement?
Wasserman: We listen to our customers. We’re a very customer-centric company.

The phrase, “Your Vision, Our Future” is an expansion of the commitment to the customer’s perspective. Not only are our sales and marketing staff meeting our customers, our engineering and product development team is out there as well. We make sure that our engineers are in tune with what is happening in the industry, and I believe that has an enormous impact on the development of our products. Additionally, we spend a lot of time with customers listening to what they have to say. We recently hosted a focus group for a new product due out in a couple of years. While working with the group, we spent most of the time on the new system’s operating software and the process controls to make sure it offers what users are looking for. As in the past, the results from the focus group were very positive. Customers have been a major inspiration for our new products, and we’re very thankful for their contributions.

CLP: Tell us about some of the new products from Olympus.
Wasserman: Olympus has always been
focused on patient safety, so we are very excited to be launching our new Olympus osYris Patient Safety Solutions in response to our customers’ increased demands for enhanced patient safety and the reduction of medical errors. Olympus osYris is a suite of wireless point-of-care software products running on handheld PDAs with built in bar-code scanners that assure the accurate ID of patients and the matching of caregivers, blood products, laboratory specimens, images, medication, and results. These devices allow health care professionals to meet the bar-coding guidelines being established by the JCAHO and the FDA.

This positive patient-identification system uses a two-dimensional bar code to identify the patient. For example, when a patient has blood drawn, the phlebotomist or the nurse goes to the patient’s bedside, scans the caregiver bar code, then scans the patient’s two-dimensional bar-coded wristband, and receives sample collection information, including the type and number of tubes required via the handheld PDA. Once the blood has been drawn, the caregiver then prints out the bar-coded labels to be placed on the specimen tubes right at the patient’s bedside. Costs escalate when specimens cannot be identified because the label on the tube is not readable, or not there, or if the sample was mislabeled. The Olympus osYris system provides users with a recording system that states when the specimen was drawn, who drew the sample, and when the laboratory should be expecting the specimen. All the while, the bar code and the label are easily identifiable.

This same system expands into the area of blood transfusion. Compatibility labels are created to accurately connect individual units of blood with a specific patient so that when the transfusion takes place there is a closed-loop of positive identification. This type of accuracy in identification also accommodates requests for imaging, fluids, and medications.

We also have developed the AU Connector—a new automation module for connecting multiple Olympus chemistry and immunoassay systems into a single laboratory work cell. We’ll be able to connect as many as four Olympus analyzers, including the new AU3000i immunoassay system that we’re developing. We believe this will reduce bottlenecks and the risk of specimen carryover.

And finally, we’ve developed a financial cost-per-reportable program. It is a joint risk-sharing program that provides hospitals with a quarterly efficiency report. We identify areas to improve inefficiencies, as well as areas where they are doing rather well. We then work with the lab in a consulting capacity to help improve its overall operations.

CLP: How does the company market its products?
Wasserman: We have our own sales organization; however, we also use distributors in certain areas of the marketplace.

Our essential theme, when it comes to marketing, is redefining. We believe that Olympus can help labs redefine their operations to meet ongoing cost containment issues affecting health care, especially hospitals. We have a unique expertise built through years of experience working with laboratories and blood banks that have to handle large volumes of work in an efficient manner.

CLP: What are the challenges Olympus faces, and how does the company overcome such issues?
Wasserman:We introduced a new line of analyzers for the hospital market about 7 years ago, starting with the AU600. Since then we have introduced a complete line of new products. We looked at the marketplace to see what our competition was missing, and responded by providing products that customers wanted, but that were not yet available.

Because of our innovative product line, our history of reliability, productivity, efficiency, and experience in the commercial lab, we’ve been able to make tremendous inroads. We’ve been successful in the hospital laboratory market with focused efforts, the right programs, and solutions to meet our customers’ needs through the standardization of our products.

CLP: What makes Olympus stand out from its competitors?
Wasserman: We are focused on the customer, and we continually look ahead to where the market is going. Taking the time to talk with the users of our products and the users of our competitors’ products, has enabled us to develop quality systems with effective processes. We think that because of the way our products have been designed—allowing the consolidation of workstations and the standardization of operating systems—we stand out from our competitors. In addition, our service and support organization has been consistently ranked at the top by several well-known industry-ratings groups.

CLP: What are the company’s plans for the future?
Wasserman: We’re constantly in high-growth mode looking for new products. In the future, we’ll continue to offer our chemistry, lab automation, and blood-bank systems, in combination with our new immunoassay systems and our full menu of reagents. Also, we will continue to expand the osYris patient-safety platform.

Decreasing costs is a challenge not only to the product users, but also to the manufacturers like ourselves who are trying to produce the most efficient products. For example, osYris was designed to meet the Institute of Medicine’s critique of the industry. In 2000, the organization put together a report highlighting the large number of errors that potentially affected the lives of 98,000 people, and cost the hospital industry more than $37 billion.

The feedback we’ve received about our patient safety initiatives has been terrific. The processes reduce, and in many cases eliminate, errors. That’s an example of what we’re doing. We’re moving aggressively into the marketplace, looking for opportunities that are going to make our customers much more efficient and more productive, and that will better meet their needs. In the future, we’ll spend more time doing consulting and implementing process and workflow improvements for our customers.

CLP: Please summarize the company’s philosophy.
Wasserman: Olympus is committed to providing the highest quality products and services to the marketplace. We contribute a large amount of our resources to research and development for the manufacturing of our instruments, reagents, and software. We do so knowing how important it is that our customers have the right product to provide the most valuable and accurate information. To gauge the effectiveness of Olympus’ total dedication to customer needs, just take a look at the significant market-share gains we’ve made over the past few years. In addition, we are committed to enhancing the knowledge of both industry professionals and our employees by sponsoring educational opportunities for them.