Pictures of the Future Fall 2007
Seamless Communication – Buenos Aires
The Music is Back
Five years after Argentina was shaken by a severe financial crisis, Buenos Aires, the city of the tango, is booming again. Among the forces behind this rebirth are infrastructure technologies from Siemens. At the same time, economic growth is creating major challenges in the power generation and transportation sectors.
Buenos Aires’ Puente de la Mujer bridge shines courtesy of Osram. Siemens is also helping to build the City’s new subway and has made the country’s health care system more transparent (bottom)
Traffic is bumper-to-bumper on the Illia freeway in Buenos Aires. The capital’s metropolitan area is now home to 13.5 million porteños, as the region’s residents are known, and greater Buenos Aires also houses nearly half of the country’s industrial plants. As a result, the city is the undisputed center of Argentina’s commercial, industrial, and cultural life. For Matthias Kleinhempel, the five million private vehicles, taxis, and diesel buses that make their way through "the Paris of Latin America" every day are evidence of an economic upturn. But there’s a downside: "Nearly all the cars have only one person in them," says Kleinhempel, who took over as head of Siemens Argentina in 2002, at the peak of the economic crisis that led to the collapse of Argentina’s financial system. "These days, many people can afford their own car again."
Indeed, most Argentine citizens are doing better now. "We’ve got an excellent communication infrastructure. The educational level of the Argentinians is above average and we have very well-trained engineers," Kleinhempel says, adding that this is why Buenos Aires is now such a popular location for software factories operated by major global IT companies such as SAP, IBM, EDS, Accenture, Motorola, Sun, and Tata (India). The companies’ logos can be seen along with those of many new four and five-star hotels that have opened in the swanky new harbor district known as Puerto Madero, as well as along the Rio de la Plata. The construction boom in these areas reflects the country’s average nine percent economic growth over the last few years.
Kleinhempel says that the communication sector was the first to recover from the crisis. "Half of the communication infrastructure in Argentina was built by us and more than 35 million medical prescriptions are processed each year using Siemens technology."
"Things looked different ten years ago," says Gabriel Simcic, a director at Siemens IT Solutions and Services, referring to the situation when IMED was launched at the end of the 1990s. With IMED—the most extensive communication and IT solution in the Argentine healthcare system—patients can use the Internet to have prescriptions authorized by their health insurance company and processed by a pharmacy. Siemens has provided smartcards to individuals with health insurance throughout the country. The implementation of this project required the harmonization of dozens of different software solutions in use at the country’s pharmacies to ensure that all of them could access the central authorization system operated by Siemens. But now that the system has been implemented, even small pharmacies can now place their orders via a call center set up for this purpose. The same solution also accommodates large pharmacies in Buenos Aires that operate according to the American "drugstore principle" and need to process hundreds of prescriptions per hour in real time. IMED also offers a solution that is smoothly coordinated with hospital systems. "A total of 7,200 pharmacies are connected to the IMED network, along with 3,000 doctors and hospitals, 20 private health insurance companies, and six million insured individuals," says Simcic. "We’re also incorporating a payment feature for medications and treatment into our system." "Every health insurance company has its own billing procedure, which IMED is able to classify and process," adds Jorge Arriaga, who, as managing director of Farmalink, coordinates contracts between insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry. One company, PAMI, which insures 2.5 million retirees, is the country’s largest health insurer.
Knowledge Cuts Costs. Argentine health insurance companies can use their access to data on the medications distributed by pharmacies, treatments, and lab tests to compare the information and thus control their costs. A networked system also allows insured individuals to get medications more rapidly. IMED currently serves six million Argentinians—or around half of all privately insured individuals. "We’ve also developed a concept for integrating the state-run insurance program into our system," says Simcic. The country’s Ministry of Health has not yet, however, made a decision on the matter.
The municipality of Buenos Aires is already a step ahead. "Investing more in information and communication technologies is not a luxury," says Diego Pablo Gorgal, a representative of Buenos Aires City. "On the contrary, such investment helps us optimize limited resources and become more efficient." His favorite example here is the digitization of all entries into the central civil registry office, which since 1866 has been recording births, marriages, divorces, and deaths in huge, hand-written books. "But today young porteños can order a birth certificate via the Internet and then pick it up at one of our 16 registry offices," says Gorgal. Since 2003, Siemens has been responsible for converting the administrative processes from paper to electronic documents, as well as networking the city’s 16 registry offices.
"We have finished scanning 3.5 million entries from the last 28 years," says Arturo Carpani Costa, a manager responsible for public-sector projects at Siemens. The project also includes a special digital signature system that provides information on who last viewed each file. The system ensures that no entry is falsified or deleted. "When we had to rely on the books, it could sometimes take up to two weeks to obtain information," says Carpani Costa. Today, the same procedures take only a couple of minutes, even if the search involves a name as common as Fernandez, for example.
Siemens Argentina has also taken on an additional project for the municipality of Buenos Aires in the area of IT outsourcing. Gorgal plans to use information and communication technology to bring the huge amount of traffic in the city under control and improve traffic safety. "There are more traffic fatalities in Argentina than deaths resulting from crime," says Gorgal. Last year, an average of 21 traffic fatalities per day were recorded. Siemens was commissioned back in 2000 to monitor major thoroughfares. Today, fleets of cars equipped with radar and high-resolution cameras capture images of motorists who violate speeding and parking regulations. Siemens handles everything from recording the violation and assessing its severity to producing and distributing tickets.
Maximum Capacity. Around the world, urban planning experts agree that the top priority for megacities should be intelligent solutions for dealing with huge volumes of traffic (Pictures of the Future, Spring 2007, "Facts and Forecasts"). That’s why Buenos Aires is now focusing on expanding its mass transit system, especially the Subte, as the city’s subway is known.
The subway system is already overcrowded. "Every day 1.2 million people ride 50 km of track on our five subway lines—and that’s our maximum capacity," says Subte chairman Edgardo Kutner. The city’s goal, he says, is to transport around 2.2 million passengers on nine lines covering 80 km by 2012 to 2013.
At the moment, Line A (built in 1913 as Latin America’s first subway) and Line B are being lengthened to include two and four more stations, respectively, in order to link booming districts. Kutner is most proud of the new Line H, however, which is the first with air conditioning. Line H is also known as Paseo del Tango because every station features artwork and is dedicated to a famous tango dancer. "After 60 years without any new construction, we’re completing a 6-km subway line to link the Pompeya bus station in the south with the Retiro train station in the north," says Kutner. The first five stations opened in May 2007, and the entire line will be completed in 2009. New F, G, and I lines are planned.
Siemens is involved in all of these subway projects, for which it is providing its entire range of technical expertise. Experts are modernizing the electrical equipment for the nearly 100-year-old Line A at night during the three hours when the trains do not operate. "The new Paseo del Tango (Line H) is also being equipped with state-of-the-art signaling technology and intelligent systems, such as Automatic Train Operation (ATO)," says Eugenio Real, Argentina’s Transportation System director. ATO automatically reduces the speed of trains traveling too closely in sequence.
"We’re off to a good start, but we still need to make public transportation more attractive," says Andrés Borthagaray, an architect who is also executive director of the Buenos Aires 2010 strategic planning council, where he serves as an advisor to the city government. Borthagaray believes that intelligent IT solutions are the key to improvement. "We need real-time information for passengers so they’ll know when the next bus is coming," he says. His concern extends beyond the porteños to include the many tourists who are returning to Buenos Aires, the world capital for tango enthusiasts, now that the city is booming again. In 2006 four million people visited the city.
Major Projects. Kleinhempel also sees huge potential for growth in the area of transport projects, especially now that the Argentine government has launched a broad nationwide plan (Plan Integral Tránsito y Transporte) that addresses all transport modes. "We received major orders in 2006," says Kleinhempel, reflecting the generally robust state of the national economy. In 2006 Siemens was awarded a US$1 billion contract to build two new gas-and-steam turbine power plants. One third of Argentina’s electricity output of 24,000 MW is generated at power plants equipped by Siemens.
The two plants will be handed over in 2008. Siemens is supplying two gas turbines, a steam turbine, and control technology for both facilities. It’s also providing a heat-recovery steam generator. Experts estimate that Argentina’s total electrical output will reach 38,000 MW by 2015. Kleinhempel is confident that "growth in the energy market will be followed by investment in transport and medical systems, with the latter being significantly financed by hospitals."
Nikola Wohllaib
Traffic is bumper-to-bumper on the Illia freeway in Buenos Aires. The capital’s metropolitan area is now home to 13.5 million porteños, as the region’s residents are known, and greater Buenos Aires also houses nearly half of the country’s industrial plants. As a result, the city is the undisputed center of Argentina’s commercial, industrial, and cultural life. For Matthias Kleinhempel, the five million private vehicles, taxis, and diesel buses that make their way through "the Paris of Latin America" every day are evidence of an economic upturn. But there’s a downside: "Nearly all the cars have only one person in them," says Kleinhempel, who took over as head of Siemens Argentina in 2002, at the peak of the economic crisis that led to the collapse of Argentina’s financial system. "These days, many people can afford their own car again."
Indeed, most Argentine citizens are doing better now. "We’ve got an excellent communication infrastructure. The educational level of the Argentinians is above average and we have very well-trained engineers," Kleinhempel says, adding that this is why Buenos Aires is now such a popular location for software factories operated by major global IT companies such as SAP, IBM, EDS, Accenture, Motorola, Sun, and Tata (India). The companies’ logos can be seen along with those of many new four and five-star hotels that have opened in the swanky new harbor district known as Puerto Madero, as well as along the Rio de la Plata. The construction boom in these areas reflects the country’s average nine percent economic growth over the last few years.
Kleinhempel says that the communication sector was the first to recover from the crisis. "Half of the communication infrastructure in Argentina was built by us and more than 35 million medical prescriptions are processed each year using Siemens technology."
"Things looked different ten years ago," says Gabriel Simcic, a director at Siemens IT Solutions and Services, referring to the situation when IMED was launched at the end of the 1990s. With IMED—the most extensive communication and IT solution in the Argentine healthcare system—patients can use the Internet to have prescriptions authorized by their health insurance company and processed by a pharmacy. Siemens has provided smartcards to individuals with health insurance throughout the country. The implementation of this project required the harmonization of dozens of different software solutions in use at the country’s pharmacies to ensure that all of them could access the central authorization system operated by Siemens. But now that the system has been implemented, even small pharmacies can now place their orders via a call center set up for this purpose. The same solution also accommodates large pharmacies in Buenos Aires that operate according to the American "drugstore principle" and need to process hundreds of prescriptions per hour in real time. IMED also offers a solution that is smoothly coordinated with hospital systems. "A total of 7,200 pharmacies are connected to the IMED network, along with 3,000 doctors and hospitals, 20 private health insurance companies, and six million insured individuals," says Simcic. "We’re also incorporating a payment feature for medications and treatment into our system." "Every health insurance company has its own billing procedure, which IMED is able to classify and process," adds Jorge Arriaga, who, as managing director of Farmalink, coordinates contracts between insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry. One company, PAMI, which insures 2.5 million retirees, is the country’s largest health insurer.
Knowledge Cuts Costs. Argentine health insurance companies can use their access to data on the medications distributed by pharmacies, treatments, and lab tests to compare the information and thus control their costs. A networked system also allows insured individuals to get medications more rapidly. IMED currently serves six million Argentinians—or around half of all privately insured individuals. "We’ve also developed a concept for integrating the state-run insurance program into our system," says Simcic. The country’s Ministry of Health has not yet, however, made a decision on the matter.
The municipality of Buenos Aires is already a step ahead. "Investing more in information and communication technologies is not a luxury," says Diego Pablo Gorgal, a representative of Buenos Aires City. "On the contrary, such investment helps us optimize limited resources and become more efficient." His favorite example here is the digitization of all entries into the central civil registry office, which since 1866 has been recording births, marriages, divorces, and deaths in huge, hand-written books. "But today young porteños can order a birth certificate via the Internet and then pick it up at one of our 16 registry offices," says Gorgal. Since 2003, Siemens has been responsible for converting the administrative processes from paper to electronic documents, as well as networking the city’s 16 registry offices.
"We have finished scanning 3.5 million entries from the last 28 years," says Arturo Carpani Costa, a manager responsible for public-sector projects at Siemens. The project also includes a special digital signature system that provides information on who last viewed each file. The system ensures that no entry is falsified or deleted. "When we had to rely on the books, it could sometimes take up to two weeks to obtain information," says Carpani Costa. Today, the same procedures take only a couple of minutes, even if the search involves a name as common as Fernandez, for example.
Siemens Argentina has also taken on an additional project for the municipality of Buenos Aires in the area of IT outsourcing. Gorgal plans to use information and communication technology to bring the huge amount of traffic in the city under control and improve traffic safety. "There are more traffic fatalities in Argentina than deaths resulting from crime," says Gorgal. Last year, an average of 21 traffic fatalities per day were recorded. Siemens was commissioned back in 2000 to monitor major thoroughfares. Today, fleets of cars equipped with radar and high-resolution cameras capture images of motorists who violate speeding and parking regulations. Siemens handles everything from recording the violation and assessing its severity to producing and distributing tickets.
Maximum Capacity. Around the world, urban planning experts agree that the top priority for megacities should be intelligent solutions for dealing with huge volumes of traffic (Pictures of the Future, Spring 2007, "Facts and Forecasts"). That’s why Buenos Aires is now focusing on expanding its mass transit system, especially the Subte, as the city’s subway is known.
The subway system is already overcrowded. "Every day 1.2 million people ride 50 km of track on our five subway lines—and that’s our maximum capacity," says Subte chairman Edgardo Kutner. The city’s goal, he says, is to transport around 2.2 million passengers on nine lines covering 80 km by 2012 to 2013.
At the moment, Line A (built in 1913 as Latin America’s first subway) and Line B are being lengthened to include two and four more stations, respectively, in order to link booming districts. Kutner is most proud of the new Line H, however, which is the first with air conditioning. Line H is also known as Paseo del Tango because every station features artwork and is dedicated to a famous tango dancer. "After 60 years without any new construction, we’re completing a 6-km subway line to link the Pompeya bus station in the south with the Retiro train station in the north," says Kutner. The first five stations opened in May 2007, and the entire line will be completed in 2009. New F, G, and I lines are planned.
Siemens is involved in all of these subway projects, for which it is providing its entire range of technical expertise. Experts are modernizing the electrical equipment for the nearly 100-year-old Line A at night during the three hours when the trains do not operate. "The new Paseo del Tango (Line H) is also being equipped with state-of-the-art signaling technology and intelligent systems, such as Automatic Train Operation (ATO)," says Eugenio Real, Argentina’s Transportation System director. ATO automatically reduces the speed of trains traveling too closely in sequence.
"We’re off to a good start, but we still need to make public transportation more attractive," says Andrés Borthagaray, an architect who is also executive director of the Buenos Aires 2010 strategic planning council, where he serves as an advisor to the city government. Borthagaray believes that intelligent IT solutions are the key to improvement. "We need real-time information for passengers so they’ll know when the next bus is coming," he says. His concern extends beyond the porteños to include the many tourists who are returning to Buenos Aires, the world capital for tango enthusiasts, now that the city is booming again. In 2006 four million people visited the city.
Major Projects. Kleinhempel also sees huge potential for growth in the area of transport projects, especially now that the Argentine government has launched a broad nationwide plan (Plan Integral Tránsito y Transporte) that addresses all transport modes. "We received major orders in 2006," says Kleinhempel, reflecting the generally robust state of the national economy. In 2006 Siemens was awarded a US$1 billion contract to build two new gas-and-steam turbine power plants. One third of Argentina’s electricity output of 24,000 MW is generated at power plants equipped by Siemens.
The two plants will be handed over in 2008. Siemens is supplying two gas turbines, a steam turbine, and control technology for both facilities. It’s also providing a heat-recovery steam generator. Experts estimate that Argentina’s total electrical output will reach 38,000 MW by 2015. Kleinhempel is confident that "growth in the energy market will be followed by investment in transport and medical systems, with the latter being significantly financed by hospitals."
Nikola Wohllaib
A Hundred Years in Argentina
Siemens will celebrate 100 years of operations in Argentina in 2008 with a gala event at the newly restored and reopened Teatro Colon opera house, which itself will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2008. Even before its subsidiary was founded in 1908, Siemens installed Argentina’s first telegraph system in Buenos Aires in 1857. Further large projects included construction of the city’s C and D subway lines in 1934 and 1936. With Siemens’ help, the Obelisco—the city’s trademark monument—was built in 1936, to be followed shortly afterwards by the world’s broadest avenue, the 140-m-wide Avenida 9 de Julio. Today, over 3,500 people work for the six Siemens Groups operating in Argentina.