Summit World Trade changed the name of its nuclear medicine equipment company from Spectrum Medical Systems to Summit Nuclear in January. Summit has also reassigned many of its sales representatives, who had been handling sales for Sopha Medical Systems, to its own nuclear business, said Chuck Giomuso, product manager for Summit Nuclear in Twinsburg, OH.
Summit took over U.S. sales of Hitachi's nuclear medicine equipment from Raytheon Medical Systems two years ago when Raytheon exited the medical imaging field (SCAN 12/14/88). At that time, Summit could not use its own name for the company created to sell the Hitachi equipment because of its nuclear medicine sales representative relationship with Sopha. Instead, the Spectrum name, under which Raytheon had sold the Hitachi equipment, was chosen for the company as well, he said.
Sopha subsequently built its own sales organization in the U.S. and phased out its representative relationship with Summit. Four Summit sales representatives still sell Sopha equipment, but they will be transferred back to Summit in a matter of months, Giomuso said.
Summit Nuclear has used this influx of ex-Sopha representatives to build its nationwide organization to 22 representatives and five regional managers. Growth of the sales organization will continue, he said.
Summit's relationship with Hitachi in nuclear medicine is separate from their Hitachi Medical Systems of America joint venture. The Japanese imaging vendor owns 75% of HMSA, which markets MRI and high-end radiology systems in the U.S. under the Hitachi label. Hitachi nuclear equipment is supplied on an OEM basis to Summit Nuclear, which is wholly owned by Summit, he said.
Summit World Trade was set up by a group of ex-Technicare executives nearly four years ago, following the demise of that medical systems subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson (SCAN 9/02/87).
Although the firm performed well selling equipment for Sopha, Hologic and other companies, the only sales representative relationship Summit has maintained outside of the two Hitachi businesses is with ISG Technologies. The latter is a three-dimensional medical workstation manufacturer, Giomuso said.
The Summit name gained recognition as the firm sold the imaging equipment of other companies. In fact, it became better known than Spectrum; hence the corporate name change. Spectrum will continue, however, as the label on Summit's nuclear cameras and computers, he said.
Summit's top-of-the-line nuclear camera is the Neurospect 2000, a four-headed single-photon computed tomography scanner dedicated to brain imaging. But demand for this type of premium dedicated SPECT system has remained limited. Only one is installed in the U.S., at Johns Hopkins University.
Summit's main nuclear products are its single-head, large-field-of-view rectangular DT camera and the DTC, a smaller, circular camera for cardiac and head imaging. The vendor also sells a 64-bit nuclear image processor, the 64DP.
