India is one of the nations where the health care industry is booming. Kaushik Shah is the owner of K S Biomed Services, a medical equipment maintenance company based in India. In an e-mail, Shah said that new hospitals are springing up throughout the country, enabling more residents to access health services. The trend is increasing the use of imaging services by the Indian population.

"The laser camera market is very strong at the present [time], as laser film provides better image quality and less image deterioration over a period of time in Indian environmental conditions," Shah said.


OEMs are also seeing market growth in regions of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Jim McLain, senior marketing manager for hardcopy solutions with Agfa Healthcare, doesn't directly handle the company's business overseas but says that it's thriving.

"I do know that certain markets are growing by leaps and bounds. We're actually outstripping our manufacturing plants," he says.

Other manufacturers are also staying steady or growing due to their global sales.

"Definitely SONY is still staged really strong when it comes to that market because we are international," says Lida D'Ambrosio, product marketing manager for radiology with SONY Electronics Inc., Medical Systems Division.




Konica Minolta is also doing a significant amount of business abroad.

"Though there has been a decline in the U.S. market for laser imagers, our market share remains constant within the current base of new sales," says Ron Batory, marketing manager for conventional imaging products for Konica Minolta. "We are a global company and supply dry imagers to a growing market in Mexico and Latin America, as well as the United States."

Refurbishers who do business abroad, echo these trends. Some say they expect to service and sell imager units overseas for at least another decade or so.

Current imager users

Despite the significant decline in the imagers market, there is still a need for the modality in some sectors of the industry.

"There are still many, many facilities that are strapped by the economics of today. Though the cost of digital imaging has come down, well-established practices are tough to convert to newer products as the longevity of their current imaging equipment prevails," says Batory. "Dry lasers are still a low-cost replacement compared to a wet chemical darkroom. There are still many chemical darkrooms in use throughout the industry that look for dry imaging as their next move since PACS may be out of their current budget," he says.

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