Penny-pinching hospitals eager to get more life out of their medical equipment, an aging U.S. populace needing more treatments and a growing installed base for MRI and PET machines will help drive the global medical imaging equipment service industry to $12.35 billion by 2017, according to a new market research teaser.
Global Industry Analysts Inc. said in an announcement last week that the business of repairing and maintaining PET, ultrasound, X-ray, MRI and CT scanners would continue to expand, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, the fastest growing world market, which enjoys a compound annual growth rate of 6.71 percent.
However, the United States is still the largest market, with Europe a “distant second,” the company said. For instance, 48 of the 70 companies profiled by the firm are in the U.S., with only 12 in Europe. (Asia also has 12 companies.)
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Kochi: People who go for a CT scan or x-ray at hospitals and diagnostic centres in Kerala may be atserious radiation risk as many medical institutions in the state use junk X-ray tubes and CT scan machines that are discarded by Europe and the US.
Radiation devices,mainly X-ray tubes,whose fiveyear life term has expired,are being imported to Kerala in large numbersfrom theUS and Europe.Such devices cause serious health hazards.
We have alerted theAtomic Energy Regulatory Board about the import of poor quality radiation devices and itisup totheboardtotake a final call on permitting import of such devices, a senior official in the state health and family welfare department,who requested anonymity,said.
Following expert advice,the state government has decided to set up a Directorate of Radiation Safety (DRS ) to conduct quality check on all radiation devices used in hospitals and other institutions.This is the first time that such a body is being set up in the country.
Preliminary probes have revealed that the majority of imported devices are banned in the US and Europe due to high radiation risk, the official said.
According to data available with the state government,there are 2,500 centres in the state,which use over 6,000 radiation devices,including dental Xray,for diagnostic purposes.The government has decided to act on its own to check the quality of the radiation devices.In another two months time,the state will have DRS to check the quality and radiation level of the devices installed at all diagnostic centres and hospitals in the state, said DRS director-designate K A Davis.
Currently,a few private agencies are conducting quality checkof radiation devices.But they enter into an unholy nexus with diagnostic centres to issue certificates.The DRS will conduct a mandatory periodic quality check of the devices at all hospitals and diagnostic centres.Above all,centres planning to install new devices should get it approved from the DRS after a spot inspection, Davis explained.
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An innovative cough detector uses acoustic respiratory monitoring (ARM) to detect wheezes, rhonchi, and coughs, aiding the diagnosis of respiratory conditions.
The Wheezometer device is an ultrasound-based cough detector using ARM technology that fits against a patient’s neck, automatically detecting coughs and counts coughing events by detecting both high and low frequency mechanical vibrations in the tracheal area, and then tracking their severity and duration. The device then stores that data or sends it wirelessly to a computer or other logging device. Just 30 seconds of breath sounds are sufficient to use the advanced signal processing algorithms to detect, quantify, and objectively document the presence of wheeze and its extent.
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Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a novel device to continuously and systematically monitor the dynamics of premature babies’ breathing. The small, noninvasive device dubbed “Pneumonitor,” makes possible the early detection of respiratory problems, allowing for preventative care before the onset of complications. The findings were published in the January issue of Intensive Care Medicine.
Dr. Danny Waisman of the Technion Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Carmel Medical Center and Prof. Amir Landesberg of the Technion Department of Biomedical Engineering, the device’s developers, say the device has been already been tested on animals in different disease models – including asthma and respiratory tract disorders.
