NEW YORK – Siemens Healthineers will in coming years phase out support for four legacy testing platforms as the company migrates customers to its newer Atellica instrument lineup that offers expanded automation capabilities.
The Erlangen, Germany-based firm is ending support for all Advia Chemistry, Advia Centaur, Dimension, and Dimension Vista instruments. The company previously announced that it was ending the production and sale of those instruments, and it has begun notifying customers with affected systems about upcoming end-of-support dates after which it will no longer offer test materials or maintenance services for the affected platforms.
Lisa Rose, executive VP and head of Core Laboratory Solutions for Siemens' diagnostics business, said that the exact dates when customers lose support will vary depending on factors including the platforms that they are using, the countries where they operate their labs, and any contracts that they have with Siemens Healthineers.
Rose said that the company plans to end support for its Advia Chemistry instruments by the end of 2025. While the firm also will stop supporting its Dimension Vista instruments in Europe during 2025, she said that the firm extended the end-of-support date in the US by the end of 2026 due to the higher numbers of customers that are using those instruments and contracts with those customers, among other factors. The company expects to end support globally for its Advia Centaur and Dimension EXL instruments by the end of 2030.
"All these platforms have served our customers exceptionally well," she said. "We've had unique technologies that customers have preferred, one versus the other, but they all played in the same immunoassay, clinical chemistry space, so they were overlapping."
The Advia Chemistry XPT, Advia 2400 Chemistry, and Advia 1800 Chemistry systems offer throughput of either 2,400 or 1,800 tests per hour, and the firm said on its website that the systems are designed to meet high-demand chemistry workloads. The company likewise said that the Advia Centaur XPT, XP, and CP Immunoassay systems are designed to help labs improve productivity to manage increasing demand, and those instruments offer throughput of 240 or 180 tests per hour.
However, the Dimension EXL 200 and EXL with LM Integrated Chemistry systems, which integrate chemistry and immunoassay testing, are used to run up to 440 photometric tests, 187 integrated multisensory technology tests, and 167 immunoassays per hour. The Dimension Vista 1500 and 500 Intelligent Lab Systems, in comparison, also integrate immunoassays and clinical chemistry but those systems offer throughput of up to 2,000 or 1,000 tests per hour.
Siemens Healthineers began a transformation program in 2023 that included reducing the company's headcount and eliminating those four product lines in favor of transitioning customers to the Atellica instrument line. Company officials announced in November that its diagnostics business had become leaner, more profitable, and poised for growth and margin expansion as a result of the €450 million investment in those changes. The firm ended sales of the Advia Chemistry, Advia Centaur, Dimension, and Dimension Vista instruments as part of that transition.
In November, Siemens Healthineers CEO Bernd Montag said during a conference call related to the company's Q4 earnings that its installed base of legacy instruments was expected to be a drag on the growth rate for the diagnostics business for the next two years. He noted, however, that the Atellica line has shown consistent growth, and the company expects rising revenues as customers update their instruments.
Rose said that Siemens Healthineers had built its instrument lineup through a series of acquisitions, and it is consolidating the platforms to the Atellica line using the technologies that the company has determined would be best to address evolving needs. She said that the Atellica lineup offers more automation features, onboard temperature and humidity controls, and consistent instrument operations and reagents that allow customers to simplify their operations, training, and inventory across lab or hospital systems.
"We're a continuous improvement company, so we're constantly looking at how to improve these platforms and make them even better to serve our customer needs," she said.
Rose also noted that the Atellica line includes the simultaneous processing of reagents and samples to deliver rapid results, and the instruments have a menu of more than 50 assays with turnaround times of less than 20 minutes. She noted that Siemens is also expanding its menu through ongoing development of a series of assays for neurology, oncology, and cardiology applications, adding that the firm's Neurofilament Light Chain (NfL) assay to aid the management of multiple sclerosis is a recent example of the firm's work to offer more tests.
The company's efforts to minimize energy and water consumption is also proving to be an advantage in certain markets, she said. Hospitals and labs in the EU, for example, are required to produce annual reports on their ecological sustainability efforts, while Australia introduced last year a national health and climate strategy for the development of a sustainable, climate-resistant health system.
Rose said that lab customers can be hesitant to change, although the company has specialists who can support those customers with assay changeovers and validation to make that transition easier. She declined to estimate what portion of Atellica buyers are existing customers, but company officials said by email that the Atellica line is now generating more than half of the diagnostics segment's revenues, with growth in the mid-teens.
Sheila Erpelding, VP of laboratory services for the Iowa-based Great River Health hospital system, said that her lab uses the Atellica Solution instrument with the automated Atellica Sample Handler component, and she previously worked in a lab with Vista chemistry and Centaur immunoassay platforms. While she said that she loved the simplicity of operating the Vista instrument, she also said that the Atellica's sample handling module has helped to improve processes for technicians, and she noted that the Atellica has simpler maintenance operations with reduced hands-on time compared to the Centaur instrument. She also said that maintaining one instrument rather than two has been helpful.
Erpelding said that her priority is to implement processes to help her techs be as efficient as possible, and she wants to eventually add a de-capper module to further automate the lab's processes.
Siemens Healthineers secured US Food and Drug Administration clearance and CE marking for the Atellica Solution platform in 2017 and said by 2019 that the system had been helping it to win over new customers. The firm more recently, in July 2023, launched its Atellica CI Analyzer for low- to medium-volume labs, and the company had previously said that the launch would complete its updated immunoassay and clinical chemistry testing portfolio.
The company also launched last year its Atellica Integrated Automation system to consolidate tasks and reduce manual steps that are performed by lab staff, and the firm launched this October the automation system for use with the Atellica CI Analyzer.
Rose said that Siemens Healthineers has already developed Atellica Solution versions of all of the clinically relevant assays that had been performed on the legacy instruments, although the firm is still working to secure regulatory clearances in the US and other markets for a few tests for the Atellica CI Analyzer. She noted that the company expects that those remaining assays will be available by the end-of-support dates for the legacy analyzers.