SystemOne and TIMS Connect Diagnostics Across 8 Countries to Help Address TB in Mining Communities

System One - Disease Intelligence. At The Speed of Now.

May 30, 2018  – Springfield, MA, and Johannesburg, South Africa – SystemOne, a connected diagnostics company using data to drive healthcare impact and solutions, today announced its work with the program “TB in the Mining Sector in Southern Africa” (TIMS). Working together since early 2018, SystemOne and TIMS are connecting 11 diagnostic devices -- GeneXperts in this case -- in Occupational Health Service Centers across Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These services include TB testing on the GeneXpert MTB/RIF assay.

These Occupational Health Service Centers face the challenge of monitoring TB testing and reporting for the program, ensuring instruments are working, and managing inventory for remote testing sites that are spread across 8 countries.

SystemOne is connecting all 11 instruments across the 8 countries to allow TIMS project coordinators located centrally in JHB, South Africa, to remotely monitor:

  • Number of tests being performed under the project
  • Instrument status (error rates, utilization rates, downtime)
  • Stock levels to ensure proper inventory management

Project staff including clinic nurses will be able to generate and receive automated reports on monthly basis, thereby easing and ensuring reliable reporting to stakeholders and funders.

“The rates of TB infection amongst the mining sector of Southern Africa are some of the highest in the world, driven by factors such as high rates of HIV infection, silicosis, poor access to routine health services, overcrowding and circular migration,” said Brad Cunningham, VP Strategic Initiatives, SystemOne. “Connecting GeneXperts is an important step in understanding how TB and co-infections are spreading, while ensuring that the investment in modern diagnostics pays off.”

The TIMS initiative, launched across 10 countries in Southern Africa, aims to create a regionally coordinated response to TB and related illnesses affecting mine workers, former mine workers, their families and communities. One of the main goals is to increase TB case finding among key populations in the mining sector. For more information on TIMS, please click on: https://www.timssa.co.za/Whoweare/AboutTIMS.aspx

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