Summit uses its own name for nuclear medicine firm

Summit World Trade changed the name of its nuclear medicine equipmentcompany 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 itsown nuclear business, said Chuck Giomuso, product manager forSummit Nuclear in Twinsburg, OH.

Summit took over U.S. sales of Hitachi's nuclear medicine equipmentfrom Raytheon Medical Systems two years ago when Raytheon exitedthe medical imaging field (SCAN 12/14/88). At that time, Summitcould not use its own name for the company created to sell theHitachi equipment because of its nuclear medicine sales representativerelationship with Sopha. Instead, the Spectrum name, under whichRaytheon had sold the Hitachi equipment, was chosen for the companyas well, he said.

Sopha subsequently built its own sales organization in theU.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 representativesto build its nationwide organization to 22 representatives andfive regional managers. Growth of the sales organization willcontinue, he said.

Summit's relationship with Hitachi in nuclear medicine is separatefrom their Hitachi Medical Systems of America joint venture. TheJapanese imaging vendor owns 75% of HMSA, which markets MRI andhigh-end radiology systems in the U.S. under the Hitachi label.Hitachi nuclear equipment is supplied on an OEM basis to SummitNuclear, which is wholly owned by Summit, he said.

Summit World Trade was set up by a group of ex-Technicare executivesnearly four years ago, following the demise of that medical systemssubsidiary of Johnson & Johnson (SCAN 9/02/87).

Although the firm performed well selling equipment for Sopha,Hologic and other companies, the only sales representative relationshipSummit has maintained outside of the two Hitachi businesses iswith ISG Technologies. The latter is a three-dimensional medicalworkstation manufacturer, Giomuso said.

The Summit name gained recognition as the firm sold the imagingequipment of other companies. In fact, it became better knownthan Spectrum; hence the corporate name change. Spectrum willcontinue, however, as the label on Summit's nuclear cameras andcomputers, he said.

Summit's top-of-the-line nuclear camera is the Neurospect 2000,a four-headed single-photon computed tomography scanner dedicatedto brain imaging. But demand for this type of premium dedicatedSPECT system has remained limited. Only one is installed in theU.S., at Johns Hopkins University.

Summit's main nuclear products are its single-head, large-field-of-viewrectangular DT camera and the DTC, a smaller, circular camerafor cardiac and head imaging. The vendor also sells a 64-bit nuclearimage processor, the 64DP.