As 2008 drew to a close, so did demand in the U.S. for imaging equipment. The timing couldn't be worse. The crisis in the U.S. credit markets felled an already stumbling market for capital equipment such as MR and CT. Vendors began feeling the pinch in the first half of the year, reflecting a downturn that began last year.
Revenues from CT shipments to U.S. sites in the first half of 2008 fell to $580 million, down from $755 million over the same period a year earlier, according to consolidated estimates cited by industry sources. This financial carnage came on the heels of a double-digit drop in the 2007 compared with 2006, during which total revenues fell to $1.4 billion from $1.75 billion.
MR shipments dropped 16% in the first half of 2008 compared with the previous year's period. The shortfall "about $530 million versus $630 million in the first half of 2007" was foreshadowed by very slow order activity in 2007.
In the first half of 2008, revenue from the shipment of integrated PET/CT systems to U.S. customers plummeted to just $110 million from $155 million in the year-earlier period. By comparison, revenues in the first half of 2006 were about $178 million.
There were some bright spots, typically markets addressed by equipment requiring the least capital investment. Ultrasound, for example, weathered the storm well in the first half of 2008. Consolidated industry estimates indicate that radiology revenues and the number of delivered new units each rose about 3% compared with the previous half year. Ob/gyn revenue rose about 2%, but on substantially fewer units shipped. The industry estimates pegged new unit deliveries at about 18% below the previous half-year period, indicating a trend toward the purchase of expensive, high-performance products.
Mammography was a star performer, as vendors shipped 1200 fullfield digital systems to U.S. customers in the first half of the year. This compared with 765 in the first half of the previous year.
But as vendors entered the fall of 2008, the credit crunch took hold, casting doubt over just about everything with a dollar sign attached.
"When things are up in the air like this, you don't see big-ticket purchases going forward at a normal pace," said Tim Evenson, vice president of sales and marketing for Philips Medical Capital. "Customers are calling to say, ‘I'm still going to go ahead, but I'm just going to take things a little more slowly to see what's going on.'"
While sitting on the sidelines, healthcare providers looked forward to a more normalized financial environment, hatching plans to move ahead with imaging purchasing plans, but only after the credit crunch had passed. Vendors, lenders, and providers drew solace from down markets that had preceded the current one but rebounded sharply from pent-up demand. Continued tightening in reimbursement led to a cautious but nonetheless optimistic assessment.
