Documenting the Future of Sustainable Healthcare
Every year, companies release thousands of new technologies into the world that improve, enrich, and save lives. Roche Diagnostics, a division of the global healthcare company Roche Group, is one of those companies. The company develops and manufactures hundreds of products and technologies used in diagnosis and testing in research institutions, hospitals, commercial laboratories, and even at home.
“Automating documentation production with Adobe FrameMaker changed the entire process, which gives us faster time to market moving forward.”
Thomas Risi
Head of Documentation Core Lab
Roche Diagnostics
These cutting-edge technologies can be complex. High-quality technical documentation is vital to patient safety because it helps ensure that products and technologies are used correctly. Trying to keep up with innovation and convey all of the necessary information can lead to complex documentation. A single operator manual can have up to 1,500 pages, with another 1,500 pages in training and service manuals.
The documentation experts from commatec, a Roche Diagnostics partner, have helped develop technical documentation for more than 25 years. Based on customer feedback, Roche Diagnostics determined that its manuals needed a refresh with more imagery and less text. Roche Diagnostics and commatec decided to switch from unstructured to structured editing with XML files.
Adobe FrameMaker helps commatec to convert and create XML files with ease. Automation created with FrameScript and loaded into FrameMaker assist with conversion. The familiar FrameMaker interface allows teams to make layout changes and add images with ease. Moving forward with structured XML documentation, Roche Diagnostics estimates that the time need to produce a PDF has been cut in half.
The resulting visual documentation not only impressed customers but industry professionals. Roche Diagnostics manuals received the prestigious tekom Dokupreis award in October 2016.
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