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Is the Terason t3000 better now that it has an Acuson P50 label?

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Terason t3000? Seen it! Only this time it's called the Acuson P50.

The Terason t3000 next to the Acuson P50 (right)

Walking the floor at RSNA, I stumbled across a company I'd seen in the past, but not paid a whole lot of attention to. The company is called Terason, and about 6 months ago, it released (albeit quietly) the MacBook Pro-based Terason t3000 ultrasound system.

So at RSNA, after being quite impressed by Acuson's new product, I later found the Acuson P50 on display at another vendor's booth... only this time it was called a Terason t3000. Come to find out, this product has been around for a bit of time and Siemens has taken it and branded it as its own product.

Back in August I saw an FDA approval that, at the time, didn't make any sense to me. It was from Siemens and it announced the Acuson P50, which it states "The Acuson P50 (TM) Ultrasound System is identical to the Teratech 2000 and previous Teratech models as identified in the predicate device section" ... with the exception of some new probes. As it turns out, this Siemens/Acuson is a re-branded Terason product (a darn nice product at that).

Shocked? Me too, I guess. They've pretty much dropped the ball on this market, failing to build on the Cypress, and now they have a nice product to offer. Lately, industry insiders are all disappointed (worldwide) with Siemens' slow reaction to the ultrasound market. The general feeling is that ultrasound is just a throw-in for their CT and MR products to sweeten a deal... which must be why Siemens fell asleep at the wheel when it comes to innovation and are boasting this MacBook Pro system as its own, excellent innovation. And it's important to note how they're back to branding their ultrasound products as "ACUSON", not Siemens, after they all-but-tried-to-kill the Acuson brand and make it their own. Oops.

But back to the real story here: you shouldn't think that this Acuson P50 is a lesser product, even if you've never heard of Terason (from whom you can buy this same product with different probes). This Terason unit is quite impressive and fully shared service t3000 (Siemens advertises the P50 as a C/V unit only). The Terason folks are good people and they made a product good enough for one of the Big Three to name it their own. Not bad.

I spent some time with the Terason folks at their RSNA booth and they're good people... friendly, knowledgeable and extremely enthusiastic about their systems. They don't advertise the re-branding and, come to think of it, they didn't say much about it when I talked about the P50 and t3000. They're excited about their product and were really enthusiastic about showing the benefits of the Macintosh operating system underneath... something the Siemens reps were not prepared to do (they didn't even know that it was actually running Windows XP and that you had to get out of it to see a Mac interface.... so I think the sales reps were quite surprised as well).

All in all, both products are quite cool. The Terason comes with a 2-year warranty and has the shared services capabilities. If you're interested in this unit, you can drop me an email and I'll put you in touch with one of the sales reps there.

Siemens rolls out ultrasound-equipped MacBook Pro - Engadget

MacBook Pro,Parallels Macintosh Windows,compact ultrasound,Siemens,Terason t3000,terason ultrasound,Acuson p50,siemens p50

For my first RSNA report, the Siemens Acuson P50 compact ultrasound unit is what I thought was one of the coolest, most innovative products I've seen in some time. It's a beautiful unit, and I thought Siemens was waking up to the call, but as you'll see in my next report (coming this week), this excellent unit isn't a result of great engineering from Siemens. There's another small company out there that did the fantastic innovation, and Siemens found a way to market it a whole lot better.

If you're looking, don't look past this unit, it's very cool. And based on my conversations with Siemens personell at the RSNA show, they're still figuring it out. That's because if you really want to know about this P50, the Siemens booth is the wrong booth to see this wonderful little laptop unit. There's another place selling it, too. They created it, but their booth is smaller and their marketing budget and expertise don't have the Siemens label. But the other place has a shared-services unit with slightly different transducers.

As a final note, seeing Engadget pick up this story was pretty cool. It's a MacBook Pro, which is what I recently moved to for my business (highly recommended!), but it's running Windows on the Boot Camp application, which runs native Windows on a Macintosh. Nice, but if you want to run Windows on your Mac, check out Parallels... I can run our custom business app and Outlook 2007 on top of my Mac apps. Way cool. But that's a whole separate issue. If you're here in Chicago at RSNA, stop by the Siemens booth and see this thing, it's incredible. SonoSite beware.

Quoted from http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/26/siemens-rolls-out-ultrasound-equiped-macbook-pro/:

Siemens rolls out ultrasound-equipped MacBook Pro - Engadget

Siemens rolls out ultrasound-equipped MacBook Pro

Posted Nov 26th 2007 11:39AM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Laptops

We've seen MacBooks re-purposed for various uses in the past, but never quite like Siemens new "P50" laptop, which takes a standard issue (if slightly outdated) MacBook Pro and outfits it with some ultrasound equipment to accomodate doctors that just can't be tied down. Apparently designed specifically for cardiology and vascular applications, this one boasts an "array of transducers," along with an integrated stress echo function and a range of cardiology application packages which, Siemens says, "considerably simplifies and accelerates the workflow in echocardiography and vascular diagnosis." Mac fans may not want to boast too much about this one, however, as it seems that Siemens has opted to use Windows as a basis for the platform.

RSNA next week

Hello all,

Next week I'll be at the RSNA conference in Chicago through Tuesday. If you can't make it and have any questions for the vendors or would like my opinion on any new or old products, send me an email and I'll try and help out. I have a few meetings and will be looking very closely at Ultrasonix, as I haven't had a good look at its equipment yet and I've heard great things about their product. I'll also check out ZONARE and new products from the big three at GE, Siemens, and Philips.

I will also spend some time with the DICOM software maker ASHVA and checking out its iMagic DICOM software. This looks like a pretty solid product for those who are looking for a simple DICOM solution that includes solid reporting features. Drop me a note at my gmail address if you would like my thoughts or any information.

-Brian

 

ultrasound,new ultrasound,diagnostic ultrasound

ZONARE Ranked Top Hand Carried Ultrasound Vendor

A new report from KLAS has ranked the ZONARE ultrasound as the top ultrasound in a few categories. A few of these categories are quite surprising, as well. ZONARE is ranking top in quality, and second in reliability and durability (presumably to SonoSite). It's surprising that such a young company would rank highly in these three categories against companies such as Biosound, GE, and SonoSite. So this is good news for the company, which seems to be a mostly silent player outside of the corporate "large contract" world (they won a large contract out west).

This is one of the companies I'm most interested in seeing at RSNA. It appears ZONARE has a wonderful concept, and other folks in the industry whom I've asked said that the image quality is comparable to some very high-end systems. The person with whom I spoke (not a ZONARE employee) said it went head-to-head with the iU-22, Logiq 9 and Sequoia and held its own very well... some stating that it's comparable to these systems in 2-D imaging. That's quite impressive for a compact system.

However, the system apparently can't compete in color or other areas, but I'm sure they'll be on their way with that soon. I heard from another that its reporting package is the best among compact ultrasounds.

I plan on visiting their booth next week at RSNA and I'll give it a more full report at that time, along with observations on other systems, including the P50 from Siemens (the apparent replacement to the Cypress). Questions?

Anything you'd like me to check out at RSNA? Drop me an email.

Don't forget to check out our specials at the GPS Medical website as well. We're currently running specials on the SonoSite Titan and the Acuson Cypress.

compact ultrasound,Zonare,laptop ultrasound,hcu

Quoted from http://www.devicespace.com/news_story.aspx?StoryID=77421&full=1:

ZONARE Medical Systems, Inc. Ranked Top Hand Carried Ultrasound Vendor in 2007 - News, Search Jobs, Events

ZONARE Medical Systems, Inc. Ranked Top Hand Carried Ultrasound Vendor in 2007

11/14/2007

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- ZONARE Medical Systems, a developer of premium ultrasound systems, today announced it has been ranked as the top hand carried ultrasound (HCU) vendor in the inaugural KLAS HCU study. The company was ranked first in image quality, ergonomics and throughput, according to the survey, and second in reliability and durability.

"We are extremely pleased to receive this top HCU honor based on such a highly respected, independent survey," said Donald Southard, president and CEO for ZONARE. "To be rated as first in KLAS reflects on our commitment to meeting customer needs through innovation, excellent service and unique technology. Along with the significant growth of ZONARE since our first shipment in 2005, this recognition helps reconfirm the expanding acceptance of our proprietary Zone Sonography(TM) technology and Convertible Ultrasound(TM) platform."

Siemens Releases new compact ultrasound

It appears as though Siemens has released its successor to the Acuson Cypress with the release of the P50, a MACINTOSH-based laptop cardio-vascular ultrasound machine. It seems Siemens is joining the masses (indluding myself) of going with the Macintosh platform.

This new ultrasound includes full C/V and stress echo and should be released next month in the United States. Hopefully they will be showing it at the RSNA show next week.

I will be attending the RSNA show this year and I plan on taking a look and making some reports on the new stuff coming out. Unfortunately, it appears SonoSite won't be at the show demonstrating its M-Turbo, S-Nerve, S-FAST and other new products, so I'll take a look at what's new from the other manufacturers, including this Siemens P50. I imagine GE will show off some of its new cool stuff as well. I'll update next week with anything that's new and cool. The article for the P50 is quoted below. As usual, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me at my email address.

portable ultrasound,laptop ultrasound,P50 Acuson,Siemens P50

Quoted from http://www.auntminnie.com/index.asp?Sec=sup&Sub=ult&Pag=dis&ItemId=78813&wf=1:

Radiology, Ultrasound Community

Siemens Medical Solutions of Malvern, PA, launched a new laptop-based ultrasound scanner, Acuson P50, at the Medica meeting in Germany earlier this month.

P50 weighs slightly more than 5 kg and is designed for mobile applications in cardiology, as well as vascular applications in the operating room and anesthesiology departments. The scanner can also be used as a standard Internet-enabled PC that runs commonly used Microsoft Office applications, according to Siemens.

Siemens is touting the scanner's B-mode and color Doppler resolution, and the system includes an integrated stress-echo function. It also supports several cardiology application packages, including syngo Vector Velocity Imaging (VVI) and syngo Arterial Health Package (AHP), which can be used to determine a patient's age.

P50 has up to two hours of battery life, and is based on an Apple MacBook laptop with 2 GB of RAM, 160-GB hard disk, and 2.0-GHz Intel Dual-Core Pentium M processor. The scanner has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and deliveries will begin in December.