Company of the Year
Medical Imaging
North America, 2010
Frost & Sullivan is entering its 50th year in business with a global research organization of 1,800 analysts and consultants who monitor more than 300 industries and 250,000 companies. The Company’s research philosophy originates with the CEO’s 360 Degree Perspective,* which in turn serves as the foundation of its TEAM Research** methodology. This unique approach enables us to determine how best-in-class companies worldwide manage growth, innovation and leadership. Based on the findings of this Best Practices research, Frost & Sullivan is proud to present the 2009 North American Company of the Year Award in Medical Imaging to Carestream Health.
The Company of the Year Award is a prestigious recognition of Carestream Health’s accomplishments in Medical Imaging. An unbiased, 3rd party recognition can provide a profound impact in enhancing the brand value and thereby accelerating Carestream Health’s growth. As captured in Chart 1 below, by researching, ranking, and recognizing those who deliver excellence and best practices in their respective endeavors, Frost & Sullivan hopes to inspire, influence, and impact three specific constituencies:
- Investors
Investors and shareholders always welcome unbiased and impartial third party recognition. Similarly, prospective investors and shareholders are drawn to companies with a well-established reputation for excellence. Unbiased validation is the best and most credible way to showcase an organization worthy of investment.
- Customers
3rd party industry recognition has been proven to be the most effective way to assure customers that they are partnering with an organization that is leading in its field.
- Employees
This Award represents the creativity and dedication of Carestream Health’s executive team and employees. Such public recognition can boost morale and inspire these stakeholders to continue the best-in-class pursuit of a strong competitive position for Carestream Health.
The Decision Support Matrix, shown in Chart 1, illustrates the relative importance of each criterion for the Company of the Year Award and the ratings for each company under evaluation. To remain unbiased while also protecting the interests of the other organizations reviewed, we have chosen to refer to the other key players as Competitor 1 and Competitor 2.
Chart 1: Decision Support Matrix for Company of the Year Award
Operating as the Eastman Kodak Health Group for several decades, then as an independent company following the Onex acquisition in 2007, in recent years Carestream Health has set its medical imaging business on a solid growth path, which was evidenced by a highly successful year in 2009. By setting in action successful product and business strategies across the two pillars of its medical imaging business: digital/computed radiography (DR/CR) and imaging informatics, Carestream Health has been able to sustain healthy organic growth while also expanding its presence in the global market and gaining ground from its competitors despite the challenging market conditions prevailing since 2008 in North America as well as globally.
Carestream Health has been quicker, more effective and more proactive than the competition in adapting to the changing market landscape, and has operated with greater flexibility. Throughout a challenging year Carestream Health continued to develop solutions that are more innovative and more affordable, while still maintaining the highest quality of service. As a result, in 2009 Carestream Health has succeeded yet again in realizing the vision of the company, by demonstrating its unwavering commitment to meaningful innovation and to maximizing the value it delivers to its customers, allowing them to do their jobs better, faster, and more cost effectively.
In digital and computed radiography (DR/CR), Carestream Health has continued to grow in the U.S. market to become the market leader. In 2009,Carestream Health captured an impressive 14 percent combined CR/DR market share in the highly competitive US market. During 2009, Carestream Health has maintained a strong position in CR while making strides in penetrating the DR market, where it grew rapidly to capture a remarkable 10 percent of market revenues in 2009. A key element to this success is the new DRX-1 detector panel launched in the middle of 2009, which has shown to be a very timely move for the company. Indeed, this solution, which provides a cost effective and rapid upgrade path to DR for the users of film and of CR, without the cost of replacing an x-ray room, is quite an appealing proposition for today’s capital constrained environment. In fact, after less than a year on the market the DRX1 already has a record of accomplishment in the marketplace, where it has proven to lead to a significant increase in productivity for the current users of analog X-Ray and CR.
Followed later in 2009 by the introduction of a series of integrated equipment, the DRX-Evolution product line, the DRX-1 has further augmented Carestream Health’s rich radiography portfolio. Better than ever before, the company caters effectively to every segment of the market where it can meet virtually any budget consideration and workflow requirement. In line with the expansion of CR into specialty areas outside radiology, during 2009 Carestream Health has also started working with its channel partners in innovative new ways. The DRX-1 and DRX-Evolution are only two highlights out of a continual stream of innovations by Carestream Health, as the company continually introduces new technology and value-added features. By focusing on the patient and the clinical users of DR technology, Carestream has innovated solutions that make patient positioning faster, easier and more comfortable. This is evident in the convenience of a wireless cassette-size DR detector, DRX-1, and in the 6-axis of motion supported by the DRX-Evolution’s unique wall stand.
Another driver of Carestream Health’s continued success is that its solutions dovetail very tightly with imaging IT, which is another strategy that the company puts in action to constantly advance the workflow and productivity of its solutions. A recent such development is Capture Link, an application that automatically combines CR and DR images into a single PACS study. In fact, Carestream Health has created healthy synergies between its imaging equipment and imaging informatics groups, which are accelerating the company’s move forward in medical imaging.
In imaging informatics, throughout 2009 Carestream Health demonstrated outstanding flexibility, customization, product upgrades and technology innovation, as demanded by the today’s demanding marketplace. The company has continued to deliver successfully on its value proposition centered on productivity, and has further strengthened its leadership in customer value. This has resulted in continuous penetration of the imaging informatics market where Carestream Health has consistently moved up-market in recent years, including noteworthy growth in RIS/PACS, advanced visualization (3D), information management, IT middleware and related technology markets. Indeed, with its complete portfolio of radiology informatics solutions and a message that appeals to medical imaging providers today more than ever, Carestream Health has been competing effectively against larger as well as smaller competitors in the various segments of the market, from small facilities to large multi-site organizations.
A notable recent product launch in the imaging informatics space is the SuperPACS architecture. This highly flexible RIS/PACS infrastructure offers a powerful solution for distributed and multi-vendor imaging environments seeking to aggregate or federate the imaging IT platform working towards driving cross-site productivity by creating a global worklist, a single viewer and a seamless reading environment while at the same time leveraging previous IT investments. From a business standpoint, with SuperPACS, Carestream Health now caters effectively to otherwise underserved niche and emerging customer segments of the North American market, such as radiologist groups, physician offices, teleradiology, and hospital-based specialists and rural facilities. The recently introduced cardiology PACS is another significant new addition to the company’s portfolio, indicating that the company is growing more involved with its customers’ imaging enterprise and a developing a stronger competitive position as an enterprise vendor for medical imaging. Another 2009 innovation from Carestream Health is a brand new RIS architecture, which is still in beta testing but is already starting to get traction in the marketplace.
Carestream Health always strives to offer IT solutions that are both full-featured, and affordable. Thanks to its strong RIS products and its solid RIS/PACS integration, Carestream has been riding the RIS-PACS with great success. The company’s modular PACS and RIS offerings come loaded with value-add features such as native 3D imaging capabilities, navigation tools, voice recognition, reporting and enterprise communications, and support various deployment and financing models, such as the hosted imaging IT solutions and data center services offered through the eHealth Managed Services group. In addition to boosting clinical efficiency and productivity, armed with its product portfolio Carestream Health also works to empower IT departments with tools for business monitoring, business management, and business intelligence, such as through its Digital Dashboard. Realizing that technology alone does not suffice, Carestream Health stands out in the way it works proactively to maximize the productivity gains, the return on investment (ROI) and the profit increases that it has enabled its customers to achieve.
Under the internal name of “eXceed,” the company drives to exceed customer expectations and competitive benchmarks in ways their customers value, and to continuously improve their own performance. Carestream Health employs a phone survey process with global reach, a data-analytic approach to identifying and driving improvement projects, a rapid escalation process to address dissatisfaction, and an on-line employee dashboard of survey results for data transparency and ownership. There is a cultural change underway at Carestream Health with a renewed focus on the customer
Based on the aforementioned competitive metrics, Frost & Sullivan is pleased to honor Carestream Health with the 2010 Company of the Year Award for North American Medical Imaging.
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