BC Technical Increases its Breadth and Depth to Become the Only True National ISO in the Nuc-Med Industry
by Julie E. Williamson

While the past 11 ½ years have brought tremendous growth and hard-earned respect for BC Technical Inc., it’s safe to say that nothing can quite compare to the positive developments that have transpired over the past few years.

Aside from maintaining an impressive 50-60 percent annual growth – an increase that BC Technical has experienced every year since its debut in 1995 – the company has also been in Utah’s Top 100 fastest growing companies list three years in a row, earning its place as the nation’s leading multi-vendor independent provider of service, parts and refurbished systems for users of nuclear medicine equipment. To keep up with the tremendous growth, BC Technical has expanded its employee base from roughly 30 to about 100 employees over the last 2 years, 50 of whom are located across the nation as Field Service Engineers, Clinical Support and PET Specialists. Overwhelming customer demand, along with the company’s commitment to being truly national has precipitated the personnel increase and has also underscored BC Technical’s ongoing commitment to overall quality. The company has a customer-centric support team located in West Jordan, UT, coupled with a uniquely national field service presence that provides customers with rapid response, increased system uptime, and the installation of “best of class” parts and services by some of the industry’s leading Field Engineers.

BC Technical has partnered with most of the industry’s leading Medical Asset Management companies. These partnerships have enabled BC Technical to provide greater national coverage and expand its already robust nuclear medicine products and service offerings. While many ISOs may claim to be multi-vendor in their competency and capacity, that doesn’t mean they have the facilities, parts and infrastructure to perform the necessary testing and repair – or the field service engineers who are properly trained on the systems they claim to be covering. And if this were not enough, BC Technical is the first ISO to cross over as a seamless service partner for original equipment manufacturers.

“We are a truly multi-vendor ISO,” stressed BC Technical’s president Chuck Hale, Sr., adding that, “even the OEMs rely on the company for training and service.”

Of course, BC Technical continues to stand by its commitment of providing “affordable excellence in nuclear medicine.” The company is always looking for ways to improve and extend the shelf life of a part, including finding better and less expensive ways to test and repair items that are difficult or costly to obtain, or have been discontinued through the OEM. What’s more, even with the added breadth and depth of BC Technical and its relentless increase in competency and capacity, customer offerings and benefits, BC Technical’s prices have not increased for 2½ years – even though most other ISO and OEM prices continue to rise.

Read on for more on the latest product and service developments that promise to make BC Technical stand out even more in terms of its competitive advantage over other Nuc-Med ISOs in the industry.

BC Technical just signed an exclusive agreement with a company whose new technology will likely turn the Nuclear Medicine industry on its ear. Can you tell us more about this?
We signed an exclusive agreement in January with Spectrum Dynamics. This is a new company out of Israel that has developed a truly unique nuclear gamma camera technology that we believe is going to revolutionize the Nuc-Med industry over the next several years. The company’s D-SPECT Cardiac Imaging System can complete a Gated SPECT study in two to three minutes – a significant improvement over current technologies that require 12 to 20 minutes. In addition to the significant time reduction, this new technology has demonstrated 8 to 10 times better resolution over present systems offered by OEMs. BC Technical is the exclusive service force, parts depot and dispatch center for this new technology for the United States. This is a fantastic product and some of the leading facilities and experts in nuclear cardiology are already on board. There are currently beta systems in place at Cedars Sinai in Beverly Hills, Miami Baptist, Brigham & Women’s in Boston and Vanderbilt in Nashville. Spectrum Dynamics believed that to bring this technology to market successfully it would have to have a U.S. service force and a relationship with a world class service organization that was fully capable of supporting their product. They chose BC Technical to fulfill this role because we have earned the best reputation in the business.

You’re also about to offer customers the Cedars-Sinai’s Quantitative Cardiac Software Suite. How will customers benefit from this offering?
In the marketplace, the big three OEM’s – GE, Siemens and Philips – sell cardiac software with their new systems. But once the software is installed, it’s difficult for customers to receive software updates from the OEMs. This is very frustrating for the customer. Of the nearly 20,000 copies of Cedars-Sinai cardiac software installed, approximately 60 percent are outdated. Customers have been requesting the latest versions, so we decided to meet that need by offering it as a separate package. We now offer the Cedars-Sinai Quantitative Cardiac Software Suite, which is basically the same software offered by the OEMs, but runs on its own PC. The PC will be interfaced into the customer’s network, so they can easily obtain the patient files for processing. Another advantage of purchasing our solution is that once a customer has the Cedars-Sinai Quantitative Cardiac Software Suite installed they can change to a different OEM’s imaging system and not have to repurchase the new OEM’s expensive software.

I understand that BC Technical has developed its own unique data back-up product. What makes this so different from other data archival solutions available?
At present, the way that patient data is being archived on Pegasys processing stations is pretty antiquated, with nuclear medicine equipment using a magnetic optical transfer drive, which is obsolete. To buy the optical disk – if you can even find it – costs anywhere from $40 to $75 each, and then you can only put 2GB of data on it. Backing up and restoring data takes forever, and because it will only work on that magnetic optical drive, there’s no real versatility. We developed the “BC Backup” – a DVD backup that lets you back up 4.7GB of data from any Pegasys computer on the network. It’s also far more cost-effective and much faster. We sell the BC Backup for $500 less than what the OEMs charge for their antiquated archival system. Also, the cost of media is only about $1.25 for a DVD, compared to $40 to $75 for the magnetic optical disk. Backing up to a DVD allows you to view images on any computer.

We realized that customers want to do whatever they can to keep their Pegasys workstations around because they are better than the new standard computer systems that have come out more recently. By developing the BC Backup, we are supporting customers on their Pegasys system, while still modernizing it with the latest technology. It also has a viewer built in so if a doctor wants to use a particular image in a PowerPoint presentation they can put it on a DVD, put it in their PC and then the viewer will allow them to simply pull it up and save it as an image file to incorporate into PowerPoint. Our design engineer has worked in Nuc-Med industry for over 15 years, and with his Ph.D. in design engineering, has a wealth of knowledge. He knew what the customers wanted and he made it happen. We currently have the BC Backup in a beta site and it’s been working tremendously and has met and exceeded expectations. We are now taking orders for this product and will start shipments in June. Although we have just released the BC Backup, we are already working on expanding its capabilities. We are also developing a BC Backup DICOM that will work on any imaging modality.

What does the future hold for BC Technical?
We will continue to expand into other manufactured lines so we can truly cover all of the Nuc-Med and PET systems that are out there. Quality has always been at the core of our business and that will certainly continue to be our primary focus. Our DOA rate is just below three percent which is significantly better than the industry standard. We have the cream of the crop in terms of customer service and support infrastructure, and we have the capabilities and facilities to handle virtually any Nuc-Med service need.

We will continue to keep branching out and moving forward on new quality products and services that will help us continue to meet our customers various needs. We take our motto literally and it remains our driving force – Affordable Excellence in Nuclear Medicine.

For more information on BC Technical please call 1.888.BCTECH1 or visit www.bctechnical.com.