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Cranfield, UK, 9th September 2024, Written by Jake Bennett –
August has been a slightly slower month for imaging IT news, due in part to it being prime vacation time in the US and Western Europe, and potentially beginning to feel some effects of vendors ‘stockpiling’ announcements for RSNA at the end of the year. However, we did see a handful of developments this month, as I explore below…
GE’s Not ‘All In’ On Public Cloud
The vast majority of conversations in radiology IT are geared toward public cloud in markets such as the US and increasingly so in Western Europe. With cloud vendors such as AWS, Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud Platform evaluating the opportunity of medical imaging. However, GE Healthcare recently announced that it signed a memorandum of understanding with 3verest, a provider of private cloud services to healthcare and other industries. 3verest currently provides private cloud solutions for radiology in the US, the UK and Australia. The agreement is still in its early stages but demonstrates that, despite the momentum surrounding public cloud, there is a need for flexibility in deployment strategy. There is still a significant proportion of the global radiology IT market today that has greater comfort in maintaining their data in a private cloud over the perceived ‘exposure’ by hosting in public cloud. If you’d like to explore the impact of cloud on Imaging IT, Signify Research’s topical report; Cloud Adoption and Business Model Evolution in Imaging IT will be publishing at the end of this month.
Konica Pushes Further Into Enterprise Imaging
Konica Minolta was in our news round-up last month, after the outpatient-focused imaging IT vendor partnered with Apollo Enterprise Imaging for the latter’s VNA. This month, another partnership follows hot on the heels of the last, as Konica announced a collaboration with image exchange specialist ClearPath. As we discussed previously, Konica is on a war-footing to push itself further into the hospital market with a move toward enterprise radiology, and this latest partnership is a complementary addition to the strategy. ClearPath is an omni-directional image exchange vendor, both focusing on image requests from providers and patients, which will be an increasingly important part of a US-based vendor strategy as the healthcare provider network becomes more disparate, coupled with patients seeking more empowerment and engagement with their own imaging.
United Imaging Partners With CARPL
United Imaging Intelligence has partnered with CARPL to make its uAI Discover solutions for CCTA, Pulmonary Nodules and Bony Thorax Fractures available on the CARPL platform. United has been aggressively expanding internationally the last few years, with success primarily in emerging markets. The vendor has also explored mature markets such as the US and Western Europe, although the focus has been on the modality business, rather than IT. Inclusion of its proprietary AI algorithms on CARPL’s platform may help boost international exposure of United Imaging as an imaging post-processing vendor (advanced visualisation and AI). However, the business impact will be slow, with CARPL featuring over 100 other algorithms on its platform, standing out from the crowd will be paramount.
Outpatient Market Not All Consolidation
While the outpatient imaging market is undeniably in the sights of private equity and large radiology networks, some practices and smaller groups are choosing to look elsewhere for collaboration. While August witnessed RadNet announce plans to open another 21 centres by the end of 2025, and private equity-backed SimonMed open 7 new outpatient imaging facilities in Florida, we’ve also seen a couple of slightly different announcements bucking the trend. This month we saw Rhode Island Medical Imaging join the large coalition of privately owned practices, Strategic Radiology, following the likes of Wake Radiology. Secondly, Outpatient Imaging Affiliates expanded its joint venture with Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist, opening another outpatient imaging facility in North Carolina. Imaging IT vendors must consider the changing landscape of outpatient imaging in the US, and while there is undeniable consolidation, there remains a stalwart market of small radiology groups and independent clinics that also need radiology IT solutions.
Synthesis For The Win-thesis
Relative newcomer to the radiology IT market, Synthesis Healthcare announced that its zero footprint diagnostic viewer, “VISION”, has been approved by Health Canada, building on the vendors US-FDA approval earlier this year. The expansion into Canada follows a handful of contract announcements from Synthesis over previous months that has signalled the US market’s wider appetite for cloud-native, web-hosted solutions. It will be interesting to see how much of the market, newcomers with solutions built on new tech stacks can carve out and displace incumbents.
If you have any questions about the announcements discussed here or have any research requirements for the wider Imaging IT market, please reach out. Feel free to message me on LinkedIn, reach out via email at jake.bennett@signifyresearch.net, or book a meeting with me here!
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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.
About Signify Research
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