Medical Device Link.

BUSINESS PLANNING & TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

At the 2006 meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, Jabil Circuit Inc. (St. Petersburg, FL) was one of only a few outsourcing exhibitors catering to other exhibitors. Jabil leverages its diversified base of electronics design and manufacturing to help clients leverage broad component trends and commoditization. Unlike other outsourcing firms with which medtech manufacturers must negotiate ownership of intellectual property (IP) that comes out of product research and development, Jabil grants customers any IP that comes out of a project. In 2005, Jabil saw its strongest demand within the medical market and worked with the top-five imaging modality vendors.

Custom software development firm Foliage (Burlington, MA) was also at RSNA. In addition to developing embedded software for aviation, industrial applications, and medical devices, Foliage has taken on connectivity projects on general-purpose computing platforms. Foliage's white papers include "Navigating the Integration and Interoperability Rapids" and "Rapidly Leveraging Product Acquisitions in the Medical Marketplace."

Also exhibiting at RSNA, 3mensio Medical Imaging BV (Bilthoven, The Netherlands), a 3-D reconstruction software firm, develops software leveraging high-performance graphics engines developed for the computer gaming industry. By avoiding proprietary graphics-processing hardware, 3mensio can realize a cost advantage without eroding the value of its software. Founder and CEO Frank Wessels recognized the opportunity presented by the increase in computer gaming graphics performance and the increasing number of volumetric digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) images. "We are targeting adoption beyond radiologists to clinicians like surgeons who are already trained to think in three dimensions," he says.