From the September 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Dunlee looks forward
Dunlee, which this year celebrated its 70th anniversary, is looking toward the future and ramping up production capabilities in its Aurora, Illinois, Hamburg, Germany, and Suzhou, China, X-ray tube manufacturing facilities. Dunlee’s third-party replacement business continues to grow with the addition of a new CT tube, the Dunlee DA200 P40, which Heather Funk, Dunlee’s senior manager of marketing and business development, says is an alternative for GE Optima CT660 scanners.

“With hospitals and imaging centers wanting to hold on to scanners longer than we have seen in the past, the demand for our replacement CT tubes remains robust, and we will continue to support this market,” Funk says. As Dunlee works with AllParts Medical, a parts sourcing and distribution company that Philips acquired in 2011, and which sells Dunlee certified pre-owned CT tubes, the company has noticed momentum in the in-house service market, Funk says.
“We are continuously working to improve our relationships with these groups to help them meet changing demands,” Funk says. “With more to offer, we are seeing our relationships with customers, regardless of type, getting stronger. We are able to offer more of a solution rather than just a replacement product. “ Along with AllParts Medical, pre-owned X-ray tubes are also available from companies including BC Technical, Ed Sloan & Associates, Technical Prospects, W7 Global and Zetta Medical Technologies.

Mike Ghazal, president and chief executive officer of Zetta Medical, says before the company sells a pre owned X-ray tube, it tests the product on CT staging bays. “We test it on the actual machine that it belongs to and we make sure that it complies with all the calibrations, per the original manufacturer’s requirements,” Ghazal says. “We document the date of manufacture and the tube count. This way we know exactly the life of the tube.”

Edward Sloan, president and CEO of Ed Sloan & Associates, says testing is a big part of the tube refurbishing process, and the process is similar among X-ray tube manufacturers and the companies that sell pre-owned equipment. “In the refurbishing process, our process is pretty much identical,” Sloan says.

Extending tube life
Aside from business changes, X-ray tube manufacturers have been looking to innovate and increase the life of their equipment, which is seeing increased demand from CT scanners. “There is always a part of our engineering effort that is extending the life of our X-ray tubes, particularly the CT tubes,” says Verhoef of Varian. “Not only would hospitals like that, but our customers have been asking for that as well.”

September 2016 Magazine

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