Abbott Diagnostics executives and Professor Pan Baishen attend the grand opening ceremony of Abbott Customer Experience Center. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Be it an individual waiting to get his annual health check-up, or a patient wanting to receive the right diagnosis and treatment; fast, accurate and reliable diagnostic testing is required for the right clinical care to be administered. To help laboratories and hospitals better address current rising challenges in today's healthcare industry, Abbott, a global leader in in-vitro diagnostics, announced the launch of first of its kind customer experience center worldwide in Shanghai.

The 5,000 square meter Abbott Customer Experience Center is situated next to Abbott's recently established China R&D Center, aiming to promote quality and standard of diagnostics in hospitals and laboratories across China and the rest of Asia-Pacific by offering comprehensive functions and services including training and education, customer support, and showcasing innovative diagnostics solutions and best practices.

Abbott Customer Experience Center is situated in Caohejing Hi-tech Park of Shanghai.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

"Better healthcare depends on better diagnostics. Abbott is working to delivering breakthrough technologies and solutions to help healthcare systems and labs improve their operations in ways that help patients live longer, healthier lives," said Brian Blaser, executive vice-president, Abbott Diagnostics Products.

The new Abbott Customer Experience Center will help propel the innovation of China's diagnostics industry and enable hospitals and laboratories to achieve better healthcare performance. The four-storey Center possesses interactive and state of the art technology to immerse its audience into a personalized journey of best practice discovery:

? Interactive lab with innovative 3-D technology to allow hospitals and laboratories to be their own architects and design their own laboratory floor plan and layout. This provides laboratories the valuable opportunity to optimize space and build the most efficient workflow possible to provide better healthcare services.

? Virtual lab offering virtual reality experience – a completely immersive and real-time experience to visualizing how the Alinity? family of instruments would appear and perform in a real laboratory setting.

? Kinect monitors providing the audience with a self-directed and customized approach to gaining the latest information on Abbott's products and solutions.

Having close to 30 scientific and technical experts, as well as a professional service team under one roof, the Center is designed to provide all-rounded service for customers and partners. Its Customer Support Center offers laboratories in China instant and real-time technical support through WeChat and hotline. This not only makes it more convenient for laboratories to access technical support when needed, it also provides distant technical support to hospitals and laboratories located in remote cities in China, significantly shortens the downtime of the laboratory service to minimize its impact on patients. The Smart Center monitors and processes data to predict potential issues and instrument downtime. It employs data science and analytics to forecast, three days in advance, technical problems that could occur with the existing instruments and solutions, enabling Abbott to proactive help laboratories manage their operations and services.

The center is equipped with comprehensive functions including training, customer support and customer experience and workshop.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

In addition to helping laboratories solve their current problems, the Center also provides training to support pathologists and laboratory staff on their daily work. Partnering with academic institutions, the Center is committed to contributing to academic research, providing data and technology support to pathologists for their research and publication efforts. The Center will consolidate first-hand feedback from hospitals and laboratories. Its strong data management capability will enable Abbott to obtain in-depth insights into China's healthcare challenges and provide healthcare providers with value-added solutions to build a healthy China.

About 60-70 percent of critical clinical decisions are influenced by diagnostic test results and the need for fast, accurate diagnostic tests has never been greater. Global testing volumes are rising due to an aging population, the growing management of chronic diseases and increased access to care. At the same time, health systems are facing pressures to perform testing as efficiently as possible with limited staff and space while also reducing costs. As institutions serve more patients and try to improve service levels with fewer qualified technicians, they are looking for new technologies and solutions that can help maximize testing efficiencies and help better manage resources.

"China's evolving healthcare landscape demands hospitals and labs to do more for less. As such, more innovative diagnostics solutions are needed. The launch of Abbott's Customer Experience Center does not only help laboratory physicians gain access to the most advanced testing instruments, it also improves the skill sets through continuous trainings. So eventually patients can get better diagnostic service and treatment", said Mr Pan Baishen, president of Chinese Society of Laboratory Medicine; Director of Laboratory Medicine and Researcher of Zhongshan Hospital, affiliated to Fudan University.

Abbott has been pushing the boundaries of innovation to provide hospitals, laboratories, and physician offices a broad portfolio of breakthrough diagnostics tests, instruments, and informatics solutions, spanning the areas of immunoassay, clinical chemistry, hematology, blood screening, molecular and point of care. For example, the company's Alinity? diagnostics systems, soon to be launched in China, offer hospitals and laboratories a harmonized experience across all critical diagnostic disciplines including clinical chemistry, immunoassay, hematology, transfusion, molecular, point of care, and informatics, delivering better efficiency and flexibility to help standardize processes and reduce costs.

"What our customers need from us today and in the future is very different from what we have done in the past. With the establishment of the Abbott Customer Experience Center, we have created a new way to support our customers and their changing needs", said Jerry Tu, vice-president, Abbott Diagnostics China. "By consistently bringing new and innovative products and technologies to the world, we help more people live life fuller at all stages of life."