DOTmed Industry Sector Report: Nuclear Medicine

by Barbara Kram, Editor | July 08, 2009

"The large OEMs were appropriate for a booming economy where people were willing to buy very expensive devices and hope for reimbursement," said Positron President Joseph Oliverio. "Things have changed. We now need to focus on cost-effective provision of medicine and maximizing patient outcomes."

From "Unclear" to Molecular

We repair MRI Coils, RF amplifiers, Gradient Amplifiers and Injectors.

MIT labs, experts in Multi-Vendor component level repair of: MRI Coils, RF amplifiers, Gradient Amplifiers Contrast Media Injectors. System repairs, sub-assembly repairs, component level repairs, refurbish/calibrate. info@mitlabsusa.com/+1 (305) 470-8013

This specialty has come a long way since the days when nuclear medicine was dubbed "unclear" medicine. Today, ever more diverse and specific radiopharmaceutical tracers can pinpoint and target disease on a cellular or molecular level. No wonder the preferred term is now "molecular imaging." Whether for cardiac, cancer or other conditions, nuclear medicine is gaining traction as the answer to many medical problems, including curbing health care costs.

"Nuclear medicine is a model that does a better job of getting answers [than many other radiological modalities] so in many cases there is no need to go on and have an additional scan. Nuclear is actually very well-positioned going forward," said Bogutski.

As research from this field demonstrates better ways to treat patients, replicating those findings in the entire population has important policy implications.

"If you approach health care at the individual patient level, it decreases the cost of taking care of specific patients - that's called productivity. As the costs go down the productivity goes up and the availability to more people goes up," Dr. Wagner said. "Smarter health care lets you decrease the cost of caring for a specific patient to make more money available for taking care of more patients."

In this sense, nuclear proliferation can be a good thing.

Read More Online

-Get a case example of a large cardiovascular group in Texas that chose a used stand-alone PET scanner to augment its practice. Go to
www.dotmed.com/news/story/9064.
-You'll see the full interview with Dr. Henry Wagner at
www.dotmed.com/news/story/9057.
-Read more about Positron's new stand-alone PET scanner at
www.dotmed.com/news/story/9005.
-Read details of the CMS expanded PET coverage decision at
www.dotmed.com/news/story/8695.