The power of knowing
In vitro diagnostics are known as the “silent champion” of healthcare. “In vitro” is Latin for “in the glass”. Tests performed outside of the patient, using glass slides, petri dishes, test tubes, and other media, influence more than 60% of clinical decision making while making up only 2% of the cost. Diagnostics help laboratories reliably empower clinicians to make the right decisions for patients at the right time and help patients stay informed regarding their health and well-being.
Roche Diagnostics, a division of the global healthcare company Roche Group, gives customers across the healthcare spectrum—from research institutions, hospitals, and commercial laboratories to physicians and patients—the power of knowing. Roche Diagnostics develops and manufactures hundreds of products and technologies that are both complex and highly regulated, including rapid disease screening tests and high-volume automated tube processing instruments.
High-quality technical documentation is vital to patient safety because it helps ensure the proper use of supplies and devices. However, the technical documentation departments at companies like Roche Diagnostics are continually challenged to keep up with rapid technological innovation, industry growth, and an expanding international clientele that speaks dozens of languages in countries with widely varying regulatory requirements.
Adding structure and visual appeal
For more than 25 years, documentation experts from commatec, a Roche Diagnostics partner, have helped the company develop technical documentation. Depending on the device, a single operator manual can have up to 1,500 pages, with training and service manuals adding up to another 1,500 pages. In addition to developing content, commatec also provides consultation services for the authoring and tool landscape.
A few years ago, Roche Diagnostics determined that the look and feel of its manuals needed a refresh. Customers were asking for more images and less text, so Roche Diagnostics developed a training manual prototype and then turned to commatec to help make the transition across documents.
“After having the same layout for several years, we wanted to move into a completely new era,” says Thomas Risi, Head of Documentation Core Lab at Roche Diagnostics. “Aesthetically, this involved a new focus on graphics. We also took the opportunity to move from unstructured to structured editing using Adobe FrameMaker as our XML editor.”
Initially, Roche and commatec considered using the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) as its Document Type Definition (DTD), which is essentially the “grammar” of a file. The DTD for an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file contains the elements, attributes, entities, and notations used. However, DITA was too complex for what Roche Diagnostics wanted to achieve. With help from commatec, Roche Diagnostics created automations for converting unstructured documents to a custom XML framework.
“Our starting point was a document that was creative and filled with insight, but didn’t have rules for standardization,” says Martin Schlicksupp, CEO of commatec. “So, we built the structure ourselves with the right blend of content rules and design flexibility using Adobe FrameMaker. FrameMaker has been our favorite tool for nearly 20 years because in FrameMaker, we always seem to find a solution for any documentation challenge we face.”