If you pay close attention to the medical equipment business, surely you've been tracking Samsung Electronics America. The Korean giant, known mostly for its consumer electronics, has initiated a strategic effort to establish itself as a leader in the health and medical equipment industry. Significant acquisitions have already taken place, including Samsung buying NeuroLogica Corp. this year, a company best known for its mobile CT scanners.

Samsung appointed Doug Ryan this summer to lead its health and medical equipment business unit. DOTmed News spoke with Ryan about the company's plans to expand further into this new area of growth.

DMN: Why did Samsung make the decision to venture into health and medical equipment?

DR: It's part of Samsung's 2020 vision to become a 400 billion dollar corporation worldwide and we really want to be a global health care leader by bringing together our expertise in IT technologies and electronics. If you look at what's happening with health care on a global scale, there's a tremendous amount of change and we believe we can bring out a great deal of value to both providers and patients in that realm.

DMN: When did this push begin and what have been some of the results so far?
DR: The entry into the health care market really started about three years ago. And there's been a number of key acquisitions as well as internal R&D. There was the acquisition of Medison, the acquisition of Nexus Dx, and most recently, the acquisition of Neurologica. It's been very successful. We've had a strong position, particularly in the U.S. market, with women's health. But now we're expanding into point-of-care and the mobile CT market with the Neurologica acquisition and as we go into next year, I'm looking to getting further into the point-of-care market with in-vitro pathology business (with Nexus Dx).

DMN: Is there anything you can tell us about what Samsung plans next for building and growing health and medical equipment (HME)?
DR: At this point in time, I really want to look at consolidating what we have. We have a tremendous business portfolio today, but naturally we'll be expanding that over the next couple of years. I can't go into too much detail now, but I can say it's an exciting opportunity and going forward it'll be a mix of internal R&D and acquisition as we continue to grow.

DMN: What's your vision for HME?
DR: It's really quite simple: We are dedicated to trying to create a new health care experience for patients and providers. Particularly here in North America, it's really essentially focused on improving the quality of people's lives through our advanced technology. We believe we have tremendous consumer technologies as a Samsung corporation, the question is how do we then get that into the health care environment to change the experience for both providers and patients?

Healthcare Act