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Cranfield, UK, 28th March 2024, Written by Jake Bennett –
March was another busy month for Imaging IT and it saw much of the industry descending on both Vienna and Orlando for the ECR and HIMSS conferences respectively. Among product announcements, partnerships and company spin outs, here are some of my top picks for Imaging IT news from March 2024:
Cloudy Forecast Ahead
Konica Minolta Healthcare Americas, Inc. are the latest Imaging IT vendor to announce a partnership with public cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS), with their enterprise imaging offering Exa Platform now being available via the cloud using AWS HealthImaging. This continues to solidify AWS’ standing as the ‘most-partnered with’ public cloud provider among Imaging IT vendors.
RamSoft also announced a new cloud feature for its OmegaAI software, “Progressive Loading”, which allows for staggered loading of images in order to improve latency and loading times for files pulled from the cloud.
Hyperscalers themselves also made a number of announcements in March, including AWS’ capability to import Large DICOM images and high-throughput JPEG 2000 transfer syntaxes now being enabled on AWS HealthImaging. On a separate note, both AWS and Microsoft announced the removal of egress data transfer fees for their cloud services, following a similar action taken by Google Cloud earlier this year. While this decision aims to attract more customers to the respective cloud infrastructure, there remain some caveats, such as Azure customers only qualifying for no egress fess when removing all of their data from Azure, making hybrid deployments on the Microsoft platform more difficult. Nonetheless, this development reflects the intensifying competition among cloud providers and the industry-wide effort to reduce barriers to cloud adoption for businesses across various sectors, including healthcare and imaging IT.
Interoperability and Image Exchange
As healthcare systems become increasingly disparate and complex, the need for interoperability and image exchange becomes more pertinent. March witnessed image exchange up-and-comer PocketHealth raise $33 million in Series B funding. The company is a patient-centric image exchange platform and currently serves more than 1.5 million patients across North America. Image Exchange vendors are not the only ones that need to be concerned with addressing interoperability across the enterprise, with imaging IT vendors touting integration with the EMR. Apollo Enterprise Imaging Corp’s latest announcement of new APIs to connect Arcc with Epic‘s Release of Information module is evidence of this continued investment from vendors.
Healthcare Spinout Creates New Standalone Giant
The spinout of 3M Healthcare was approved by the board of directors this month and is anticipated to be completed on Monday April 1st. The new company “Solventum” will be one of the largest spinouts of its kind in the healthcare/medical devices industry. The new leaders of Solventum make no attempt to hide the fact that the business had underperformed under the 3M brand, but are optimistic about the company’s future, despite expecting a 0% to 2% decline in revenue over its first full year as a standalone entity. The new company will be split into four business areas, Medical Surgical, Dental Solutions, Health Information Systems and Purification & Filtration, with over 20,000 employees to its name.
AGFA’s New South African Partner
Early in the month, AGFA HealthCare and South Africa-based radiology specialist AXIM announced a new distribution partnership, whereby AXIM will be the South Africa strategic partner for AGFA’s enterprise imaging solutions. The market for enterprise imaging in South Africa and SSA is currently very nascent, and opportunities are likely to be limited to larger more technologically advanced providers.
Is RadNet Looking to Continue Its Acquisitive Spree?
RadNet announced in early March the proposal of its second public offering of common stock at $200 million, plus a potential for underwriters to purchase up to an additional £30 million of stock. The company has said that the funds raised will be used for general corporate purposes and potential future acquisitions. Already in 2024, the radiology practice network giant has acquired 14 new outpatient imaging centres across Texas and Arizona, alongside the DeepHealth strategy unveiling at RSNA 2023 and the announced partnership with INCEPTO at ECR (March 2024). It will be interesting to observe the strategic next steps for RadNet and the ripples it creates in the provider and informatics landscape.
Cardiology Practice Management Specialist Acquired
Newcomer to the cardiology practice management space, CardioOne, has been acquired by healthcare private equity firm Windrose Capital. CardioOne is a specialist all-in-one cardiology value-based care company that partners with independent cardiologists to offer a one-stop shop solutions for improving their practice management using their CardioOne Platform, which include workflow management, business analytics, practice optimization program, cardio PACS, reporting and all other specialized software to improve efficiency of an independent cardiology practice.
Globally, many health systems are facing backlogs in their cardiology departments, with post-Covid delays still hampering clinicians. In March for example, both Queensland Australia and the UK announced significant wait lists for cardiology appointments and procedures, with an acknowledgement that there needs to be an improvement to efficiency to tackle the current problem.
If you have any questions about the developments discussed here, or have any research requirements for the wider Imaging IT market I’d be more than happy to discuss, please feel free to message me on LinkedIn or reach out via email at jake.bennett@signifyresearch.net
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Signify Research’s imaging IT service provides expert market intelligence and detailed insights across radiology IT, cardiology IT, and advanced visualisation IT, alongside operational workflow & business intelligence tools. Combining primary data collection and in-depth discussions with industry stakeholders, our thorough research approach yields credible quantitative and qualitative analysis, helping our customers make critical business decisions with confidence. Throughout the course of 2024, the imaging IT team will be further assessing developments in the market through its’ Imaging IT Market Intelligence Service.
About The Author
Jake is the Senior Market Analyst on the Imaging IT team and joined Signify Research in late 2023, after over half a decade in the medical devices and healthcare market research industries.
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