On September 1, the transaction announced on June 27 regarding Philips’ acquisition of Sectra’s mammography modality business operation was concluded. Accordingly, Philips is now the owner of the MicroDose modality business. We interviewed Dr Torbjörn Kronander, President of Sectra’s medical operations to find out about the future ahead.

Q: What does this transaction mean for Sectra?

A: Sectra is a medical imaging IT company and has been so for more than 20 years. We have more than 1,100 customers around the globe in this segment. In that sense, nothing will change. We will continue within our core business – helping radiology, mammography, orthopaedic and rheumatology clinics increase their effectiveness using innovative IT solutions. However, the resources made available by this deal will strengthen our position.

Being a dedicated IT company, we are able to meet customer challenges with a different approach to modality companies, for example. There is a trend in the healthcare sector for many hospitals to consolidate into groups that make centralized purchasing decisions. We also see that purchases of solutions such as RIS and PACS are increasingly being made at regional or national levels. In those cases, it is vital to be able to see the overall picture and implement efficient IT structures with RIS and PACS as the hub, thus enabling customers to utilize resources across regions and countries. Our recent wins of large projects in such places as New Zealand, Northern Ireland, New York, Skåne (in Sweden) and London have shown that being an IT company is a true asset in these deals.

Q: Women’s health has always been an area close to your heart – what will you do in this segment now?

A: We have a long history as a women’s health IT company. We were pioneers in digitizing mammography clinics with our mammography IT solutions and implemented our first Breast Imaging PACS in the early 2000s. Today, this solution is a world leader in this niche market. Now we can work with all modality providers, which is good for our credibility as a highly professional and independent systems integrator. Enhancing the efficiency of care in the area of women’s health remains important for us moving forward.

In strengthening our offering within women’s health, we are also introducing mammography clinics to a new online service for osteoporosis assessment, Sectra OneScreen. The service enables mammography clinics to easily screen for osteoporosis at the same time as conducting mammography examinations using the same modality. After taking the images, you simply take a hand x-ray and send it to Sectra’s online service. The hand x-ray is used to measure bone mineral density and the result taken together with other risk fractures has proven effective in identifying women with increased risk of future fractures. By adding just 30 seconds to the mammography examination, women might avoid the unnecessary suffering caused by osteoporosis. Being an online service, no capital investment is needed.

Q: What else can we expect to see from Sectra in the future?

A: We always work close to customers and research centers to stay on top of relevant trends and identify challenges we can help our customers face. Right now we are seeing an increased demand for cloud solutions. We already offer osteoporosis assessment and orthopaedic pre-operative planning tools as online services and are looking into expanding our offering in Sectra’s healthcare cloud.

Another very interesting area we see is that IT maturity is moving outside the radiology department. IT infrastructures are expanding throughout hospitals and there will be an increased demand in the future for IT solutions for other “ologies”, perhaps also in the microscopy area.

The funds and resources made available by the MicroDose transaction will enable us to address these and other challenges we foresee at a more aggressive pace.

Clinical perspective, Enterprise control, Wide area radiology, Women's health Dr. Torbjörn Kronander