With its tagline "Passion for change," United Imaging Healthcare officially launched its U.S. business with a complete portfolio of 14 FDA-cleared systems.
"We're focused on bringing high technology to healthcare systems in the United States and giving them technology that otherwise has not been accessible in the past," said Jeffrey Michael Bundy, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, UIH North America. "We have a portfolio that addresses multiple modalities at multiple price points to cover the specific requests we hear from the market. They want to see change. They want to see a vendor that is approachable and listens and provides a caring service organization. We intend to do all of that."
MRI products include one 1.5T MRI system and two 3T MRI systems. The 3T systems, such as the high-end uMR 790, incorporate uCS (united Compressed Sensing), which combines the strengths of conventional acceleration technologies and innovative compressed sensing (CS), breaking the limits of both speed and resolution with a maximum acceleration factor of 16 and an isotropic spatial resolution of 0.5.
The PET/CT portfolio comprises two all-digital systems: the uMI 780 and the uMI 550. "The uMI 550 represents the heart of what our company is all about. It's an example of how we take high-end technology and make it accessible to a much broader market. And that's what we’re committed to," said Dr. Bundy
CT offerings include a broad range of products from 20-slice CT to 160-slice CT. A full range of DR technologies include ceiling- and floor-mounted systems, such as the uDR 780i ceiling-mounted system with a 17×17 wireless detector.
In addition to the 14 FDA-cleared products, UIH is showcasing several PET/CT, CT and PET/MR systems that are pending 510(k) approval.
As a global company, UIH develops and produces a full portfolio of advanced medical imaging and radiotherapy equipment and offers medical IT and intelligent solutions. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Shanghai, the company has subsidiaries and R&D centers across China, U.S. and other parts of the world. To date, more than 2,700 hospitals worldwide are using UIH products.
"We're a company that has a passion for change. We want to be a company that listens to our customers and delivers on what they've been asking the market to do. We want to be flexible. We want to provide new business models that will allow our customers to raise care quality and lower costs in their healthcare systems," said Dr. Bundy.
With this U.S. debut, UIH has added U.S. regional headquarters in Houston, where it will integrate R&D, production, training and marketing services to better serve customers in the U.S. The company currently has employees in about 20 states and expects to grow throughout the U.S. quickly.
"At the core of our company is innovation that drives better access to healthcare across market segments and products. We're a company of about 3,200 people, about half of which are R&D researchers and we're focused on providing high-end, innovative technology across market segments, socio-economic areas and geographic areas. Our goal is to bring high levels of technology to entry-level products across the board," said Dr. Bundy.
To support the company's investment in AI, UIH formed United Imaging Intelligence, based in Shanghai, which is focused on embedding AI in UIH's core software across all modalities, and bringing AI further up the imaging chain.
"The common architecture in hardware and software across our portfolio will allow us in the future to bring evolving techniques like AI into MR and CT acquisition not just as a post-processing tool, but to speed up acquisition and provide more efficiencies," said Dr. Bundy.
Source: Applied Radiology