Toshiba has also scaled-back after listening to its customers’ budgetary concerns. To address that concern, a less expensive model was created with many of the auto features removed.

“We would hear that we had all these great features but that they would like something more basic, more old-school,” Ybarra says. “I took that information back to Japan and we dummied down the RADREX-i, where it doesn’t have the touch screen. You have to center the X-ray tubes to the film, which goes back to film and cassette days. We’re hoping this will help the market in a lower price point.”


Another trend that digital has enabled can be seen with mobility. This new generation of mobile radiology gets the machine to the patient in the OR instead of having to move him.

Hybrids
Even with budgets being on everyone’s minds, hybrid rooms combining DR technology with RF are starting to appear.

“There will be more and more of a need for these sorts of rooms in the future,” Schmiedel says. “Wireless detectors can bring both worlds together.”

There are even CR/DR hybrids.

“A CR/DR room has always been available, but what has changed over the last few years is the ability to take a digital panel and place it in an analog rad room as an upgrade to that room. Many CR vendors are attacking that space,” GE Healthcare’s Widmann says. “Another solution is for a hospital to make the conversion to direct DR, but that doesn’t supplant fully having an integrated system. Customers are looking at the cost of the digital upgrade, which in many uses, exceeds the cost of an X-ray machine itself.”

Challenges
Third-party companies are worried about what they see as a troubling increase in manufacturer efforts to restrict servicing of their equipment, including increased software and hardware protections and limitations to service by non-OEM technicians.

“The service side of their business has become more important to [manufacturers] and they are doing everything they can to force customers to use them for service,” says Ed Ruth, president of Managed Medical Imaging LLC.

Then there’s the worry that health care reform will change the landscape in ways that the OEMs will be affected most.

“The time for expensive, babied equipment is being sharply scrutinized now with the new health care reform. If a procedure can be done more efficiently, at a lower cost to the institution, the patient and the insurance companies and still provide superior imaging results, then more and more radiology departments will be looking out for these cutting-edge systems and application-based equipment,” Serrao says.

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