From the August 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

[Editor’s note: This is the first installment of Cost Containment Corner. This is planned as a recurring column in DOTmed HealthCare Business News. If you have suggestions for individuals to be interviewed or technology or services that can help health care providers to save money, we want to hear from you. Send your ideas to stories@dotmed.com with the subject line “Ideas for Cost Containment Corner.”]

Ed Sloan, Sr. founded ReMedPar in 1987, which was eventually purchased by Aramark. In 2008, he founded Ed Sloan & Associates, and has been instrumental in launching MESA in Switzerland as a Pan-European Union independent service organization.

If it is happening in the diagnostic imaging marketplace, chances are Ed knows about it (full disclosure: Ed also serves on the DOTmed Board of Directors). In early July, Philip Jacobus, DOTmed’s President, caught up with Ed on the phone to ask him about policies and procedures that can lower the cost of health care.

HCBN: What new technology is lowering the cost of health care?
ES: Remote monitoring and remote diagnostics are two trends that are really exciting to me. My engineers receive an email when an MR chiller shuts down. We can read helium levels remotely and using the Internet, we can connect to a computer to determine what is wrong with the system. This technology has been around for awhile in industry. When it is fully integrated into the health care delivery network, it is going to require fewer people to monitor more machines on a real time basis and do it at a lower cost.

HCBN: What about ‘proprietary software programs?’
ES: It is true that manufacturers design software which is protected, but I predict in the same way that there are third party developers for iPhone and Android apps, there will be software developed for remote monitoring, remote diagnostics and eventually remote calibration. In the same way the Internet has changed the world, it is changing health care.

HCBN: What about your experiences in Europe?
ES: Europe is changing every day. There are many more independent service companies than there were five years ago, let alone 10 years ago. OEMs are servicing each other’s equipment because there is less business for them. In the end, the need for better and less expensive patient outcomes will drive more independent and in-house service in Europe. Europe will be more open like the U.S. is today because European providers will demand it.

HCBN: Your company is involved in the spare parts business. What can you tell us about that industry?

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