From the October 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

“Funding and acceleration of [helium-free MR] research should be amplified,” says Consensys Imaging Services’ Spearman. “It not only has the potential to lower the cost imparted by helium to the medical imaging market [fill lines, dewars, transportation, refinement], but also lower the risks associated with liquid helium [quenches, helium burns/injuries, suffocation, etc].”

Tips for chiller maintenance
Like helium, chillers rarely get the credit they deserve for making MR imaging possible, but without them, the whole system is pretty much useless. Chillers are systems that constantly remove heat from heavy iron medical equipment like linear accelerators, cyclotrons and MR scanners.

These relatively simple systems use plain water, or a mixture of water and antifreeze (glycol), to do their jobs and the technology behind them has remained fundamentally unchanged for several decades.

But none of that takes away from the vitality of a smoothly operating chiller. HCB News reached out to some of the experts to find out what providers should be doing to make sure their systems don’t suddenly lose their cool.

The problems that are most likely to plague chillers are generally derived from poor maintenance and a lack of OEM training, says Kyla Whitehead, sales and marketing administrator at KKT Chillers. Other experts in the industry agree that having a dependable chiller starts with regular inspections and preventive maintenance.

Standard-style medical chillers weighing between 15 and 30 tons generally fall into the price range of $20,000 to $40,000, a relatively minor expense compared to the capital investment of the MR scanners that depend on them to operate.

The short answer to servicing frequency is that it depends on what the OEM specifications call for, but the rule of thumb seems to be that no fewer than two preventive maintenance inspections per year are typically in order – and more can’t hurt.

“When a customer signs a chiller service contract with us, they receive start-up and three preventative maintenance service visits per year,” says Turner Hansel, vice president of sales, medical chillers, at Filtrine Manufacturing Company. “During the PM, the service agent carefully looks at the chiller, cleans the condenser, checks the fluids and makes sure the pressures, flows and temperatures are correct.”

Citing the problems that can arise from a chiller going down, Legacy Chiller Systems recommends quarterly servicing. Most facilities make the mistake of not installing backup systems, says company CEO Martin King, and without that security blanket, neglecting maintenance can usher in a host of troubles.

October 2017 Magazine

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