From the January 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Trending toward digital and wireless
It seems that the major manufacturers of portable X-ray all agree that the biggest trend in the sector has been the increasing interest in digital technology.

“Everybody wants it because it’s faster, it does lower-dose and it improves the quality of images dramatically,” says Neukirch.
“What we’ve seen is customers wanting not only the flexibility that digital offers, but the durability and reliability of the detector panels so they can have confidence in the availability of the equipment to deliver a digital X-ray,” says Widmann. “I think our customers are also looking to not sacrifice the quality of the image that they see in their digital portable, just because it is portable. They’re asking for the same image quality that they see with a fixed rad room.”

Digital and motorized portables more prevalent in U.S.
According to Westin, digital portable X-ray systems are not as common internationally. “In a lot of other parts of the world, they are looking more for a basic portable X-ray system,” he says. “If you look into the developing countries, they are interested in doing X-ray with a portable system, but they don’t insist that it be digital.”

“I believe the U.S. sector is the hottest for portable digital right now,” says Cefalo. “I think other sectors will catch on, but the U.S. is really hot.”

Widmann has noticed that motorized mobile systems are more popular in the U.S. than they are in the majority of other countries, which seem to prefer non-motorized portable units. “We sell a good number of non-motorized systems abroad that we don’t see much of in the USA,” he says.

Upgrades for analog technology
Unlike with fluoroscopy, dose reduction is not a driving factor for portable X-ray sales, experts say. But, updates are being made in other areas to pique buyer interest. Some companies offer digital upgrade kits to transform portable X-ray machines from analog to digital. This can help those facilities unable to afford a new digital unit.

Over a year ago, Carestream Health introduced the DRX-Mobile Retrofit Kit for GE, Siemens and Shimadzu analog systems. “Now we have a model called the DRX-Transportable, and that retrofit kit goes on basically any manufacturer,” says Titus.

According to Widmann, GE Healthcare offers FlashPad upgrades to some of their fluoroscopy and Proteus lines of equipment.

Prior to purchase
There are several factors customers should take into account before they commit to buying a portable X-ray system. For starters, they should consider the user interface, which helps to determine how easily technologists can transition from fixed to portable systems. The detector, ease-of-use and power of the unit are other attributes customers should look out for.

January 2012 Magazine

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