KLAS ranks the current DR vendors. Source: www.radiology-equipment.com

KLAS has published its Digital Radiography report, which focuses on the growing adoption rate of digital radiography (DR) as healthcare organizations move toward an all digital workflow. The firm also interviewed healthcare professionals on their experiences with specific DR vendors.

Five vendors—FUJIFILM Medical Systems, GE Healthcare, Philips Healthcare, Shimadzu and Siemens Healthcare—qualified for the main body of the study. KLAS gave each an overall score and rating determined by evaluations completed by each vendor’s clients. Vendors were rated on a 1 to 5 scale.

FUJIFILM received the top overall performance ranking, followed, in order, by Shimadzu, Siemens, GE and Philips.

Products qualifying for rating in the study were:

• FUJIFILM FDR Velocity SpeedSuite
• GE Definium 8000
• Philips DigitalDiagnost DR
• Shimadzu RadSpeed DR
• Siemens AXIOM Multix M

Four additional vendors—Carestream, IDC, Quantum and Toshiba—were included in the study; however, KLAS reported that not enough data was collected to include them in the main portion of study.

The 173 survey respondents included: radiology managers (26 percent); radiology directors (22 percent); imaging managers (13 percent); and PACS administrators (12 percent).

According to the results, providers said that vendors could do more during the installation process and applications training to better prepare for the nuances of DR workflow within the enterprise.

Also, 92 percent of respondents cited the primary benefit of DR adoption is increased throughput. “DR has allowed clinicians to see more patients due to the speed at which images are taken and processed,” according to KLAS.

GE, Philips and Siemens have the most client organizations in digital x-ray among the vendors ranked in the report, KLAS said. All three can leverage legacy client bases in both software and medical imaging equipment to win more business.

However, FUJIFILM is clearly making inroads into the DR market, according to the KLAS findings. Not only has FUJIFILM established many relationships through the adoption of their CR equipment, but the Synapse PACS product is also widely used, and should give the company “ample leverage with current clients,” the report said.

The KLAS survey results also showed that respondents, when considering DR purchasing decisions, ranked vendors in almost the opposite order in which they were ranked in the study for performance.

More information about the report is available here and through KLAS’ website.