Siemens has been providing medical solutions that ensure high quality patient care and help optimise the workflow in hospitals in Vietnam.

Dr. Norbert Gaus, CEO Clinical Products, Siemens Healthcare said in an interview on October 23 that Siemens supplied Vietnam’s first PET/CT and Cyclotron to Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City in early 2009 which allows physicians to detect cancers at an early stage.

At the beginning of this year, it provided Dual Source CT scanner Somatom Definition Flash, also the country’s first, to Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi, he added.

Siemens Healthcare also offers education and training courses in Vietnam to keep medical staff updated and to create favourable conditions for best practice sharing, he said.

According to the executive, the health care sector worldwide as well as in Vietnam is facing big challenges from an aging population, which goes together with increasing incidences of chronic diseases. Thus, health care providers are facing a growing number of patients including multi-morbidity cases.

He also noted that a large share of the world’s population does not have access to health care and in many remote areas, access to quality health care is a challenge. Besides all these challenges, Vietnam has to deal with out-of-date medical systems, a lack of medical personnel an limited health care budget, Dr. Gaus said.

To help its customers deal with these challenges, Siemen is pursuing a “two-prong strategy”, he said.

“On the one hand we drive innovation in the high-end to help science institutes and teaching hospitals driving research to fight the most threatening diseases like cancer or neurodegenerative diseases. On the other hand, we strive to make high quality medical equipment available at affordable prices so that more people can benefit from it, also in mid- and entry-level hospitals and practices.

“To make medical technology better accessible for people in remote areas we offer solutions such as mobile ultrasound or X-ray units as well as in-vitro products for point-of-care use that can be taken to patients more easily,” he said.

In Vietnam, the group is collaborating with local hospitals to be up to date regarding the demand on site so that it is able to meet the needs as good as possible, Dr. Gaus noted.

Siemens Healthcare has more than 130 years of experience dedicated to advance human health. It does business around the world, employing some 51,000 employees and generating revenue of 12.5 billion EUR in fiscal year 2011.

In Vietnam, Siemens has established its office in 1993.-VNA