In the year 2000, medical physicist Jonathan Yao decided to start his own company in China, which manufactured radiotherapy conforming and imaging devices.

"He was involved in medical physics for most of his life and created LinaTech," says Simon Bhangal, director of global sales and marketing for the company. "We make hardware and software solutions for small to midsize radiotherapy clinics."

The products LinaTech offers are basically add-on products that fit any linear accelerator products out there, regardless of the original manufacturer. They allow pre-existing linacs to be retrofitted to be able to provide 3D conformal/IMRT/IGRT/SRS/SRT and SBRT therapies.

"All our products retrofit any existing linear accelerator," Bhangal says. "[We] supply informatics software for managing comprehensive cancer clinics, radiotherapy centers and medical oncology practices."

Headquartered in China originally, the operations have now moved to Sunnyvale, Calif., and just recently started to penetrate the U.S. market. So far in 2010, it has established 10 customer sites set up throughout the country.

"It's going fairly well. Just in the last month, I have sold two products; both in Los Angeles," he says. "There was a lot of interest in bringing it here because of the economy. People didn't have as much money to spend on these very expensive solutions, and our products can allow you to keep your older machine and spend about half of a new machine and we can upgrade your machine to have all the bells and whistles."

The company also still maintains a large international presence, with hundreds of product installs around the world.

"We are opening new markets around the world," he says. "We are seeing a lot of interest in Russia, Poland, Turkey, India, Saudi Arabia...there are a lot of markets for us."

Although Bhangal calls the company a small player in the market right now, he believes the technology they offer is close to that of the bigger players and thinks a lot will happen in the next five years.

"What we want to do is increase sales here in the U.S. and at the same time give some of these smaller clinics that don't have these big budgets like in the hospitals, the capabilities to provide their patients with leading-edge radiotherapies," he says. "Our company motto is to provide leading-edge radiation therapy products at a fraction of the cost."

The five-year plan also calls for the company to team up with some other medical experts to help design some newer technologies, including 4-D tracking, which will monitor the removal of a tumor in real time.

For more on the company, visit www.LinaTech.com

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