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Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | September 05, 2017
From the September 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“GTC has carefully planned to ramp up production volumes for the Hamburg site while Aurora production is wound down,” says Balluseck. “The overlap of parallel production in both sites will ensure a smooth transfer and no impact for our customers.”
Ultimately, the move is anticipated to improve overall efficiencies. Since the manufacturing capabilities will be concentrated in one site, Balluseck says it will allow the company to standardize processes and increase equipment usage.
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Growing OEM market
Although Dunlee intends to continue serving, and investing in, the replacement tube market, the brand is ramping up its emphasis on a growing OEM segment.
“The future of the OEM business lies in focusing on customer needs, combined with a deep understanding of the various modalities in which the components are used,” says Balluseck.
What kind of results might a strategy like that produce?
At this year’s Radiological Society of North America annual meeting, Dunlee is hoping to showcase a few “integrated solutions” that will shed some light on that.
GE Healthcare is also continuing to invest in the OEM X-ray tube space.
"We are experiencing strong growth in both of our on-demand transactional businesses around tubes, as well as our strategic parts agreements around tubes," says Aaron Goryl, general manager of in-house and on demand services in the U.S. and Canada at GE.
One of the company’s top objectives is improving the X-ray tube life span. The company is making investments in new tube technology and also revising its existing tube families in order to develop enhanced designs.
"With all of the health care trends and the pressures our clients are facing around costs, and also trying to maximize equipment utilization, they are looking for tubes that do have longer life so they require less replacement,” says Goryl.
It also complements workflow because a facility will have less unplanned downtime, which in the long run can provide a superior return on investment.
Liquid bearing tubes
“The big thing in X-ray tubes is management of heat,” says Jason Launders, director of operations for the Health Devices Group at ECRI Institute. “Ninety-nine percent of the energy you put into the X-ray tube is converted to heat and 1 percent for X-rays.”
Both metal bearing and liquid bearing X-ray tubes were designed to more efficiently get rid of heat. However, since metal bearing tubes spin on a ball bearing structure, it involves metal-on-metal contact, which is one of the failure points for a tube over its life cycle.
