From the September 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Letourneau, of Banner Health, says while the per-liter price of liquid helium has gone up substantially in the last decade, that hasn’t been the main driver of new technology purchases. “We don’t buy equipment based on operational costs,” Letourneau says.

Hospitals are, of course, still looking to save money, and looking to get as much life out of their equipment as they can. There are two strategies with servicing MRI systems: repairing for the short term and the long term, Beier says.


“If you repair for the short term, all you care about is the lowest overall spend for the repair today, knowing that you will sacrifice quality and useful life,” Beier says. “Repairing for the long term means you are trying to minimize overall spend during the life of the system, but spending more upfront for the parts.”

Beier says that Sumitomo-repaired coldheads, which use new factory parts, have an average life of 32 months, data that the company provides during an ISO audit, versus an average life of 14 months from third-party competitors, information that Sumitomo hears from its customers. Analyzing all the costs involved, a site could save approximately $14,000 over a three-year period by using a Sumitomo-rebuilt coldhead, even though it costs more initially, Beier says.

“If the service provider has a time and material request, they tend to buy a third-party coldhead, but if they have a service contract customer, they almost always buy Sumitomo,” Beier says.

Freedom from helium
David Taylor of MR Solutions, a UK company that developed a 3-tesla helium-free scanner in 2013 that is used by researchers in pre-clinical settings, predicts that it will only be a few years before the industry scales up to produce helium-free clinical MRI scanners, and that his company could have the technical capability to produce such a scanner in two years or less. “We’re leaking [helium] all over the place,” Taylor says. “The cost will go up and eventually it will be unavailable. There’s a charge to introduce this technology to clinical vendors. We’re sort of leading the charge. Vendors will go from wet to damp, damp to dry.”

The new technology uses a magnet design that incorporates superconducting wire, which enables the use of a standard low-temperature refrigerator to cool the magnet to the required 4 degrees Kelvin, or -269 degrees Celsius. MR Solutions has so far installed 30 systems in laboratories. “It’s all about how creative or how good your engineering is,” Taylor says. “You have to get the heat out faster than it leaks in. Each time we do a new magnet that’s a bit bigger we learn to do that more efficiently.”

Last year, Mediso launched new 3- and 7-tesla magnets, and the Hungarian company plans to work with MR developer RS2D to integrate the magnets into its pre-clinical imaging systems. Beier, of Sumitomo, agrees that OEMs are preparing for the future and that the days of helium are numbered. “The thing is, these magnets are always going to need coldheads to keep everything cold, but they’re not necessarily going to use helium,” Beier says.

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