Providence Health Care is a network of hospitals, residences and clinics based in Vancouver. It provides care to nearly 620,000 patients from throughout British Columbia and the Yukon. Its largest site is St. Paul’s Hospital, located in the city’s busy downtown hub and home to the Media Services Centre, the network’s educational support arm. The centre oversees the media and printing needs of approximately 6,600 employees and nearly 1,200 medical staff. This includes publications, annual reports, graphic arts applications, web projects, video production and printing requests.
The centre recently bought its first Canon printer, the imagePROGRAF PRO-2000, a 24-inch large format printer. They experienced too many issues with their previous machine, which prevented the centre from offering a range of printing options to their clients. “Now printing is an area I’m now hoping to rebuild with this new PRO-2000,” says Brian Smith, photographer/media specialist with the Media Services Centre.
St. Paul’s previously used another manufacturer’s 17-inch large format printer. “It was always a struggle to get it to work, to even get the heads unclogged,” says Smith. The printer’s unreliability led to stress and frustration, fewer print jobs, and misused energy and resources. “Most of the time, I had a backup plan to outsource printing because the failure rate was getting to be more than 50 percent. Our original goal was to create a new revenue source, but that ended up being a complete failure because of the waste of time and materials.” Part of the issue, says Smith, could’ve been environmental: the old large format printer couldn’t meet the challenges presented by the dry air conditions of a hospital.
The PRO-2000 can. Its PF-10 print heads with anti-clogging FINE technology reduce the possibility of clogging. Ink ejection conditions get checked by 27 sensors, and if a clog is detected, another nozzle automatically provides backup.
“I haven’t seen any of the previous problems of clogged heads,” says Smith, “or nervously checked every picture that comes out looking for the lines you get on a print when the heads are plugged.”
That consistency provides predictability. Says Smith: “It’s wonderful being able to plan your day out, knowing that you’re going to put a certain amount of time aside for printing and not have the whole day consumed by problems. And when you print something, it’s very quick.”