Technology Assessment Partners (TAP) provides a wide range of consulting services to medical product companies and investors. The global enterprise has offices in Colorado and the U.K. Clients also include refurbishers of high-end imaging equipment.

"We do business development, consulting, Intranet, and provide financing services. We don't do financing ourselves but will assist start-up companies in finding sources of funding," said Executive Partner John P. Heinrich. Heinrich played a key role in the development of mobile MRI systems in the early 1980s. He managed operations and has overseen the sales and acquisitions of medical equipment and scientific companies. TAP's other executive partner, Peter E. Taylor, was responsible for the introduction of nuclear medicine cameras and whole-body CT to the European marketplace in the late 1970's, along with MRI in the early 1980s. Over the past decade Taylor has established a number of successful healthcare product development and distribution businesses.

"Our skills and experience complement each other," Heinrich said of Taylor. "I'm an engineer by training and have a fairly high level of technical expertise in health care and imaging in particular. Peter's area of expertise is in strategy, business development, and distribution."
Heinrich provided some observations and prognostication about the industry. "One trend is toward combined modalities. The entire market has moved to PET/CT and I think you'll begin to see some PET/MRI combinations...and people doing some refurbishment and recombination as well," he predicted. "On the CT side, technology has advanced so rapidly that the current state-of-the-art, 64-slice CT, means that 4-, 8- ,and even 16-slice CTs become relatively inexpensive. There's been such a rapid generational turnover it creates a significant opportunity for very competent equipment that perhaps isn't right at the cutting edge."

As far as advice to business people, Heinrich said, "One thing I've learned over 25-plus years is stay flexible. It's often surprising how opportunities manifest themselves and you have to be ready."

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