Case Study: Varian Medical Systems achieves increased uptime and 50% faster repairs with PTC Axeda software

Varian Medical Systems - Customer Case Study

Varian Medical Systems, the world’s leading manufacturer of integrated cancer‑therapy systems, faced costly on‑site service visits and treatment downtime when instruments or planning software required troubleshooting. Operators of products like the Varian Acuity imaging system sometimes provided incomplete information or could not reproduce faults for visiting technicians, leading to lost patient treatments (one day’s downtime can affect ~35 patients). To reduce interruptions, Varian selected PTC and its PTC Axeda software (marketed by Varian as SmartConnect) to improve remote support.

PTC Axeda was implemented to provide secure remote connections, desktop sharing, file transfer, alerting and global servers to minimize latency, enabling Varian to diagnose and repair systems remotely and push software updates. As a result, SmartConnect‑enabled systems are deployed in over 1,500 treatment centers (≈4,000 hours/month), Varian resolves ~200 help‑desk calls monthly remotely (saving ~4 hours travel per call), has cut average MTTR by 50%, reduced response times from 4 to 2 hours on enabled systems, and estimates hospital savings of more than $2,000 per event; software service contracts have also grown ~17%—all enabled by PTC.

Varian Medical Systems

Dan DuBeau

Remote Access Project Manager, Varian Medical Systems