Remote diagnostics is the act of diagnosing a given symptom, issue or problem from a distance. Instead of the subject being co-located with the person or system doing the diagnostics, with remote diagnostics the subjects can be separated by physical distance.
When limiting to systems, a general accepted definition is: "To improve reliability of vital or capital-intensive installations and reduce the maintenance costs by avoiding unplanned maintenance, by monitoring the condition of the system remotely."
Process elements for remote diagnostics
• Remotely monitor selected vital system parameters
• Analysis of data to detect trends
• Comparison with known or expected behavior data
• After detected performance degradation, predict the failure moment by extrapolation
• Order parts and/or plan maintenance, to be executed when really necessary, but in time to prevent a failure or stop