Frost & Sullivan spotlights Carestream’s innovation and continued success in North American medical imaging market
Frost & Sullivan has awarded Carestream Health its 2016 North America Frost & Sullivan Award for New Product Innovation Leadership for innovation focused on value-based imaging that solves real-life problems and addresses unmet customer needs.
By empowering numerous new points-of-care and specialties with advanced, easy-to-use and cost effective imaging modalities, Carestream is expanding its value proposition well beyond the centralized imaging departments, through its best-of-breed imaging and informatics solutions, to areas such as orthopedics, intensive care, emergency department, intra-operative and bedside imaging.
The award focuses on all aspects of the company’s digital medical imaging portfolio which includes new fluoroscopy and ultrasound systems; new cone-beam CT technology; and a vendor neutral enterprise imaging Clinical Collaboration Platform.
“A result of Carestream’s commitment to innovation is its latest flagship digital radiography (DR) product, developed using proven, in-house detector technology,” said Frost & Sullivan Industry Principal Nadim Michel Daher. “This next-generation product builds off of its predecessor, the first-of-its-kind ‘DR retrofit’ offerings. It supports a higher level of workflow productivity, dose efficiency and image quality, without requiring heavy investments.”
Carestream is set to replicate the success of its DR systems in the fluoroscopy department with the launch of the DRX-Excel Plus, its multi-purpose fluoroscopy/radiography equipment. This device was developed in response to the relative lack of product and technology innovation in this specialty area. It presents healthcare providers with considerable savings by enabling them to share flat-panel detectors among multiple radiography and fluoroscopy rooms and systems.
Similarly, Carestream’s recent entry into ultrasound modality is a perfect example of the design philosophy at the company. The Touch Prime and Touch Prime XE premium ultrasound imaging systems underline Carestream’s focus on performance and usability across its product lines. Carestream was able to optimize features based on the actual needs of ultrasound professionals. The all-touch control panel, which is extremely easy to clean and offers tactile feedback on home keys so that operators can stay focused on the patient, is garnering praise from the marketplace. The user interface also can be customized to the preferences of the sonographer.
The Touch Prime and Touch Prime XE systems are positioned as the first two models of a new generation of ultrasound systems from Carestream. The product line has a scalable, high-performance platform, which promotes both technology migration as well as transducer migration. These systems provide an ideal entry point for Carestream into the ultrasound space, setting the stage for gradual percolation down to the mid-range and point-of-care ultrasound market.
Carestream’s vision to continually advance the medical imaging marketplace through new technology can be seen in the design of its investigational cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) system intended for orthopedic imaging. With this new technology, it is evident that Carestream realized that medical professionals are in dire need of a cost-effective, low-dose, 3D and weight-bearing imaging technique. When available, the CBCT system will combine the best of two modalities, namely the high-resolution, 3D imaging capabilities of CT, and the speed, convenience, radiation dose efficiency and affordability of DR.
Further proof of the company’s success can be seen in how Carestream has elevated its clinical content management to a third-generation, vendor-neutral, standards-based Clinical Collaboration Platform. Its industry-leading data aggregation and data federation capabilities allow it to integrate additional types of multi-disciplinary and unstructured content into the clinical workflow.
“Complementing its growing portfolio of imaging systems, Carestream’s imaging informatics solution set serves to solidify the company’s overall value proposition to an extended imaging enterprise,” noted Daher. “By continually advancing workflow, data management and reporting solutions a where imaging services are consumed, Carestream has gained a competitive edge with its enterprise imaging IT portfolio.”
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed an innovative element in a product by leveraging leading-edge technologies. The award recognizes the value-added features/benefits of the product and the increased ROI it delivers, which, in turn, increases customer acquisition and overall market penetration potential.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.