By day, he works in the radiology engineering department of a large public hospital in North Carolina. But by night, Lamb Tec's Brad Bogle finds ways to save his employer and other hospital clients thousands of dollars by using remanufactured or re-sourced parts. These include Siemens CT/MRI ECG cables, brush blocks for GE CT scanners, and gantry display and control assemblies.

"Our whole imaging system [maintenance] is all in-house engineers. Everything we have is maintained in house from ultrasound to PET scanners," Bogle said, noting that his institution has 26 CT scanners alone. "If you have a good department you can definitely save the hospital a lot of money. It doesn't work for small hospitals that only have one or two CT scanners and an MRI. It's hard to save money doing that, but we have a good health system and there's a lot of equipment. The more equipment you have, the more you can save."

For example, Bogle reverse engineers scanner ECG cables, which are used to monitor the patient's heartbeat so that the scanner can operate in between beats. These cables last about a year, depending on patient throughput and the technologists' gentleness. Siemens charges $1,500 for the disposable cables but Bogle sells them for $490. He also has a source that can rebuild the CT brush block, which is the silver-tipped part that transmits power and data to the gantry despite the spinning motion of the scanner ring. GE sells the part for about $7,000 but Bogle can source them for as low as $1,900. The block itself is recycled but the brush is repaired with new tips.
"Essentially it is a brand new block," Bogle said. "If you spend time to do the research and reverse engineer these things....there are thousands of dollars we've saved second sourcing these parts."

Another example is a video board for a GE scanner. GE price: $43,000. Bogle: Less than $1,000. How about a hard drive for a GE scanner? But don't pay GE's $27,000 to replace the whole computer. "I was able to replace the hard drive and reload the software and they're backed up for $600."

It just shows what a little ingenuity can do.

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