Elscint plans growth of products, sales force

Executive vice president A. Robert Sohval was appointed generalmanager of Elscint's U.S. business last month. Moshe Ben-Porath,former president, has returned to Elscint's worldwide headquartersin Haifa.

While the Israeli medical imaging vendor once seemed miredin perpetual red ink, Elscint has operated profitably for thelast seven consecutive quarters. The company is poised for expandedgrowth, Sohval said.

A restructuring in 1989 (SCAN 11/22/89) reduced debt and providedresources for growth. Sohval has the backing of his superiorsin Haifa to expand the U.S. business, he said. The general manageris boosting Elscint's West Coast sales staff in particular.

Mario R. Carranza, former director of marketing and sales forShimadzu Medical Systems (SCAN 9/13/89), was hired last year aswestern regional manager.

"We are reorganizing the sales staff and will add to it,"Sohval told SCAN. "We brought in new regional managementon the West Coast and are recruiting there and in other areasof the country, primarily in sales. We are better known in theeastern U.S. and are taking steps to address that." The company'sU.S. headquarters are in Hackensack, NJ.

While Elscint's strongest imaging modalities are nuclear medicine(see story, page 6) and computed tomography, the vendor will givean extra push to its magnetic resonance imaging business thisyear, he said.

Elscint introduced a mid-field MRI scanner at the 1990 RadiologicalSociety of North America conference. Five installations of the0.5-tesla Gyrex V have been completed in the U.S. The vendor alsoplans to introduce an enhanced version of its 2-tesla high-fieldMRI system, called the Gyrex 2T DLX, this year. Elscint sees noneed to provide 1.5-tesla or 1-tesla units, Sohval said.

"We prefer to focus our resources on our (two) mid-fieldand high-field systems rather than diluting our resources by offeringmany products in between," he said.

Elscint competes in the mid-tier CT arena, providing scannerswith many feature of premium units--such as three-dimensionalimage processing--but at a lower price.

"It would be harder for us to establish the premier positionthat some of our competitors have, where they can charge topdollar," Sohval said. "We have to offer a product thatis competitive with others but accessible to the mid-sized hospitalmarket."