by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | August 13, 2018
From the August 2018 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
The right people make all the difference
Despite all of those hurdles, Richardson Healthcare successfully entered the market in August 2014. But you may be asking, “how did they do it?”
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The key ingredient was the extensive experience of the company’s executive vice president and general manager. Patrick Fitzgerald’s resume includes positions with TREX Medical Corporation, Continental X-ray Corporation, Eureka X-ray Tube Corporation and Dunlee.
With Fitzgerald as president, Dunlee was able to develop a portfolio of products and services designed to lower costs for hospitals and healthcare providers.
But it’s not just him – Fitzgerald’s team at Richardson also has similar backgrounds, with years of experience at Dunlee, Eureka and even GE Healthcare. They have the necessary expertise in specialized parts preparation cleaners, high-temperature vacuum furnaces, and the other nuanced skills that are required to produce quality CT tubes.
"It's a very capital-intensive business, and then you add that to the fact that there aren't that many engineers who know that technology well,” said Fitzgerald. “We were fortunate, in that a good many of our people came with extensive experience from other companies.”
In May, Richardson introduced its first new CT replacement tube, the ALTA750. It’s a replacement for the CXB-750D/4A tube, which is also known as the Varex Imaging MCS-078, and is compatible with a range of Canon Medical Systems (previously Toshiba) CT scanners.
"When you're developing a replacement like this one, you are developing a form-fit-function replacement for the original OEM tube,” said Fitzgerald.
His team started the development process by evaluating the performance of the original OEM tube, including the focal spot size and dose radiation output. They then analyzed the intellectual property that may be in use in the product and developed their own reverse-engineered design.
