Sept 05

Varian Interay
Serving the X-ray Tube Aftermarket

Varian Interay of Charleston, South Carolina, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Varian Medical Systems, dedicated to fast-response X-ray tube supply. Customers are primarily small manufacturers operating on a just-in-time basis, independent service organizations, or asset management groups supporting a wide variety of X-ray imaging equipment.

Robert Hibdon, Vice President and General Manager of the business, says Varian Interay employees never forget that their products are used inside machines that help clinicians diagnose and treat medical conditions.

“We keep in mind that we are developing, manufacturing, and selling something more than just a machine,” Hibdon is known to say. “Our products are essential component parts of technologies that enable people to live longer, higher quality lives.”

Varian Interay specializes in developing lower cost replacement tubes for imaging equipment made by major OEMs. The company makes replacement tubes for most of the imaging systems used in medical settings around the world. George Pardue, president of Imaging Affiliates—a long-time U.S. customer—says he can resell a Varian replacement tube to his own customer base of hospital, biomedical, and radiology engineers “at about half the price charged by an OEM. But it’s not always price the customer is looking for. They need assurances about performance and technical support, and we work with Varian Interay to deliver all three.”

Varian is the largest independent manufacturer of medical X-ray tubes in the world. “Most other X-ray tube manufacturers are owned by equipment manufacturers. They have their own service organizations that contract with hospitals and sell their own company’s tubes as part of those service contracts,” explains Steve Kimmel, manager, international sales. “Varian Interay takes a different approach. We’re primarily supplying independent dealers. Our challenge — and our goal — is to make our customers competitive. That means giving them excellent prices and fast, great service. By emphasizing superior performance, quality, and product value within an efficient cost structure, we enable our customers to have a competitive advantage of their own.”

Varian Interay has put a number of important business practices in place, to ensure that customers receive rapid, accurate service. For example, the company is committed to having a real person answer the phone before the third ring, and to having technical support available to assist service personnel in the field. In an effort to expedite and streamline processes, the company has installed world-class enterprise level software that integrates all aspects of servicing customers, including inventory, logistics, and accounting.

“We’re working with information technologies to offer technical data online, and we’ve instituted ‘e-service,’” Kimmel says. “But we hold fast to a belief that Internet technology, while wonderful, still pales in comparison to old-fashioned customer service.”

According to Pardue, Varian Interay partners with customers in other ways, as well. Varian Interay provides him with ad slicks and other materials to include in his regular mailings to the buyers in his database. In addition, the company works with him in the development of new products.

“Over the years we have helped Varian Interay develop new X-ray tubes,” he said. “We told them what we needed, and we located customers to test the new tubes in both non-clinical and clinical settings.”

Company History
Hibdon is actually the founder of Varian Interay. When he created the company in the early 1980s, it was simply called Interay, and it grew out of his frustration with the high cost of X-ray tubes. At the time, Hibdon was managing radiology services at HCA Trident Regional Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina, and undertook a research project to find out why X-ray tubes were costing the facility so much money every year. After visiting a number of manufacturers, including GE and Machlett Laboratories, Hibdon concluded that X-ray tubes could, indeed, be manufactured more cheaply, without any sacrifice in quality. Executives at HCA were not keen to take on the challenge of manufacturing X-ray tubes, however, and Hibdon decided to try to meet the market need himself.

By 1984, Hibdon’s fledgling business had come to the attention of a company that was then known as Varian Associates. Varian’s X-ray tube division was looking for a partner to produce high-quality diagnostic rotating anode tubes. Hibdon stepped up to the plate, and as a result of that partnership, in the space of four years Interay went from $240,000 a year in net sales to $5.7 million.

Initially, Interay focused on making X-ray tubes for cath labs. According to Hibdon, this was excellent training, as the cath lab market is “a very demanding end of the business. People don’t accept anything but perfection in the cath lab,” he said. By the late 1980s, Interay’s cath lab tubes had become the company’s hottest-selling items. In 1993, the partnership with Varian Associates became a full-blown acquisition, and Interay became Varian Interay, with Robert Hibdon continuing to manage the business.
Varian Interay Today
Varian has long experience manufacturing high-quality, safe, efficient, quiet-operating, long-lasting, cost effective tubes that yield superior image quality. The company is known for producing tubes that can stand up to high levels of stress.

“An X-ray tube in a CT scanner spins around the patient at a rate of up to three times per second,” Kimmel points out. “That means significant centrifugal forces act on the X-ray tube and can dramatically shorten its effective life, if the tube is not designed and engineered correctly. Varian tubes are made to withstand these kinds of forces.”

Improvements in imaging technology have given rise to direct radiography and digital imaging. Applications like cone-beam CT, which utilize new X-ray image receptor technologies, are poised to revolutionize the market. Higher patient throughput levels and better procedures are dramatically changing the radiology consult. Ever more sophisticated imaging equipment is being developed for use in surgery, as more endoscopic procedures become the norm for treating a wider array of medical conditions.

“Varian X-ray technology engineers and scientists are working on projects in all of these areas,” Hibdon says. “Varian Interay is poised to offer its customers new X-ray tubes as they are developed for novel, emerging applications.”

“The people at Varian Interay are terrific,” says Dru Finley, Vice President of Pan-Pacific Enterprises, Inc., a New York-based company that sells medical equipment in China. “We’ve been dealing with them for over twelve years, and they are terrifically supportive. Steve Kimmel travels to China on our behalf to visit with customers several times a year, and he also attends our lengthy end-user meetings. That shows our customers that Varian Interay stands behind us, which has been critical to our success.”

Finley added: “When you’re selling equipment internationally, there are always going to be issues to resolve, things having to do with shipments, or warranties. The people at Varian Interay are quick to respond, and everyone there is helpful. You never talk with someone who says, ‘That’s not my area.’ They just make sure it’s taken care of. As a small business owner, I really appreciate that. It makes a big difference.”

As the medical X-ray imaging market continues to grow, Varian Interay will continue to support its customer base with innovative products and the service customers have come to expect. When quality counts, count on Varian Interay!