Over 90 Total Lots Up For Auction at One Location - WA 04/08

Special report: Portable X-ray continues the digital and wireless transformation

by Joanna Padovano, Reporter | January 17, 2012
Philips MobileDiagnost wDR
From the January 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

Portable X-ray systems are unlikely to trip-up if current market forecasts hold steady. And standouts among the sector are the wireless offerings manufacturers are starting to tout.

The global X-ray market was valued at $7.05 billion in 2010 and is forecasted to reach $8.65 billion by 2016, according to the MarketsandMarkets report, “X-ray Market (2011-2016) - Competitive Landscape & Global Forecasts to 2016,” due to be published next month. Mobile X-rays – predicted to take an expanding piece of the pie over that time period — have proven indispensable for many facilities.

“They are really workhorses of the facility,” says Helen Titus, Carestream Health’s worldwide marketing manager for digital capture. “They don’t get the number of images per week or per day that a stationary X-ray room would, but they do get a workout because they’re banged around so much as they’re being moved everywhere.”

Analog portable X-ray units tend to last for 10 to 12 years, according to Greg Neukirch, Philips Healthcare’s vice president of North America imaging systems for interventional and diagnostic X-ray. As far as digital portables go, it is unclear what their typical life cycle will be since they are still fairly new to the market.

Neukirch estimates that a new wireless portable unit will cost anywhere from $170,000 to $220,000, depending on the system’s manufacturer and features. The price of analog portables is typically between $35,000 and $40,000, he says.

New portables
At the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting in late 2011, Philips Healthcare introduced the second version of its MobileDiagnost wDR, a digital mobile radiography system with a wireless portable detector. Neukirch says it uses the same wireless detector, user interface and image-processing algorithms featured in the DigitalDiagnost, the OEM’s room-based X-ray system. “We could have a user go back and forth without any having to relearn how to use the unit,” he says.

Also at the show, Siemens Healthcare launched a new portable X-ray system called the Mobilett Mira, which received Food and Drug Administration clearance in September. “The name Mira comes from the Spanish word ‘mirar,’ [which means] ‘to look,’ because that’s what you’re doing when you’re doing X-ray — you’re looking for something,” says Herbert Westin, the company’s senior director of marketing for surgery and urology. The Mobilett Mira is also offered in a pediatrics version, which is painted to resemble a giraffe. Siemens has also published a comic book, “The Mighty Marvels of Mobilett Mira,” which illustrates how the system can be used in multiple clinical situations.

You Must Be Logged In To Post A Comment