Datascope machines

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bbal

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Hello! New member here...practicing anesthesiologist for past 10 years at private hospital...sorry to crash your party but I need some help from you guys. I'm currently director of our group and faced with needing to select new anesthesia machines. I know about and have extensively used Dragers (current use) and Ohmedas (now owned by GE), but have never heard of or used Datascope machines. Anyone here have experience with them? I've heard limited comments such as poor build quality and gas delivery issues, but no firm reviews. Any info would be very helpful. When you enter practice you will be exposed a little more to some of the frustrating business side of practicing, such as having to defend why you want quality anesthesia machines and not poorly built models from companies with short track records. Thanks for your some of your limited time and good luck to you all...hope you are all enjoying your training.

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Never used the machines. I currently use this transport monitor at one of the centers i work at:
datascope_passport2.jpg


Its a no frills monitor, but seems to work OK. Sorry, thats all I got.
 
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Hello! New member here...practicing anesthesiologist for past 10 years at private hospital...sorry to crash your party but I need some help from you guys. I'm currently director of our group and faced with needing to select new anesthesia machines. I know about and have extensively used Dragers (current use) and Ohmedas (now owned by GE), but have never heard of or used Datascope machines. Anyone here have experience with them? I've heard limited comments such as poor build quality and gas delivery issues, but no firm reviews. Any info would be very helpful. When you enter practice you will be exposed a little more to some of the frustrating business side of practicing, such as having to defend why you want quality anesthesia machines and not poorly built models from companies with short track records. Thanks for your some of your limited time and good luck to you all...hope you are all enjoying your training.

I'll probably get slammed a bit for this one, but consider this. It looks like Datascope bought a Swedish based subsidiary which makes the machines (assuming made in Sweden). Here's the link.

http://www.maquet.com/home.aspx?m1=...=112599744763&languageID=1&titleCountryID=224

I'll start by saying that given our overall economy and the fact that we produce/manufacture very little these days, as compared to the other "industrialized" nations such as Germany, Japan, in the higher-tech bigger business items, and China, India, and South Korea for less sophisticated products.

That being said, also consider that while most US purchasing managers could care less (foolishly) where the item they purchase is made (until it's your neighbor, property value, patient without insurance because of job loss....), many of our foreign competitors consider country of origin VERY MUCH. And, their particular country, first and foremost.

This is not to say that foreign competitors, in say Germany, will never buy a Datex Ohmeda/GE product, but lets just say they'll be a wee-bit partial to the Draagers.....

I would ask the GE people where the Datex-Ohmeda's are made/assembled, and even engineered/designed (in the case of assembly in lesser labor cost nations).

*****Surely, quality and patient care are important. I'm just saying, if you're in the position to make a significant purchase, consider American jobs all else being equal.

Best of luck.

cf
 
Country of origin info on Datex Ohmeda:

The Datex-Ohmeda factory is situated on a 166-acre site at Madison, Wisconsin. It has been in the area for 100 years now, but moved to its current green field site in around 1970. The factory covers 250,000-square-feet and is serviced by 100,000-square-feet of office space. Even so, there is still room to grow. Up until 1998, it was owned by British Oxygen, who then sold it to the Finnish group, Instrumentarium, which has 5,000 employees worldwide and earns Ä1 billion a year. Today the Madison facility employs 650 people. As well as seeing the culture change within the site, Datex-Ohmeda has also witnessed big changes in how they are supplied.

****Note, this is old data since it does reference several acquisitions but not the GE one.

****Here's some more;

Datex-Ohmeda is spending $63 million annually, so it is an important client to many of its suppliers. However, the concentration on a select few has been dramatic. The top-10 suppliers now share half of the Datex-Ohmeda total spending; the top-50 account for 89 percent of spending; and the top-100 have 97 percent between them. But while undertaking the consolidation exercise, the company paid close attention to physical location.

Of the top-10 suppliers, eight are within four hours of the Madison facility. Of the top 50, 43 are domestic manufacturers


Come on guys, let's support the home team. Again, all else being equal and assuming you'll not be compromising patient safety, which I doubt.

It's o.k. to be biased. Think of the people in the factories. These people pay taxes to the state of Wisconsin. They send their kids to UofWisconsin. They employ skilled labor, engineers, PhD's, and probably some American MD's as well that sit on advisory panels and probably have design input.

All I'm saying is to please consider this.

cf
 
Hell yeah, cfdavid! My brother did an internship at Datex-Ohmeda while he was a mechanical engineering student at UW-Madison, and now works in the MRI division of GE Healthcare. Great companies both of them...they've treated my family well!
 
Hell yeah, cfdavid! My brother did an internship at Datex-Ohmeda while he was a mechanical engineering student at UW-Madison, and now works in the MRI division of GE Healthcare. Great companies both of them...they've treated my family well!

Gimlet,

Great to hear, man. It bothers me (seriously) to see a Toshiba or Seimens MRI or CT machine when GE is such a large player, based in the U.S., and while global employ thousands of high-skilled, high wage Americans. These are the industries we must COVET! Engineers, PhD's, MD's, electricians, pipefitters, local suppliers of machined products......
Programmers..... The list goes on....

The decisions we make have ramifications. Like I said, OP, I will gaurantee to that the Germans take this into consideration when they look at GE versus Draeger. And, I'm by no means anti-German. Just sayin.

cf
 
I want to hear comments. Dissenting and for. Whitchever, but let's stur the pot a bit.

The OP has an important decision to make. This decision will affect several hundred people at the least (if not thousands). So, what do you think? 222 hits and a handful of responses. Come on people, step up to the plate.

cf
 
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...hard to disagree with. :thumbup:

Yes. Made me a bit uncomfortable when my military hospital spent $millions on a bunch of new Drager Apollos ... but they sure were nice machines.

Seemed a bit like contracting military refueling aircraft construction to a foreign company to "save" a small amount of money. It's just exporting more wealth.
 
Yes. Made me a bit uncomfortable when my military hospital spent $millions on a bunch of new Drager Apollos ... but they sure were nice machines.

Seemed a bit like contracting military refueling aircraft construction to a foreign company to "save" a small amount of money. It's just exporting more wealth.

Apollos are the bomb! P/V loops, F/V loops, Pressure support... the list goes on. I have to say though... the darth vader sound it makes is a bit annoying... but you can turn it off.
 
Yes. Made me a bit uncomfortable when my military hospital spent $millions on a bunch of new Drager Apollos ... but they sure were nice machines.

Seemed a bit like contracting military refueling aircraft construction to a foreign company to "save" a small amount of money. It's just exporting more wealth.

I completely agree. We really need a more focused industrial policy in the U.S., because our leading "competitors" sure do.

We can't continue on with the notion that manufacturing doesn't matter, which was essentially what our economic "thought leaders" were saying for the past few decades (Greenspan among the most prominent).

Interestingly, only THIS YEAR, did China surpass Germany as the worlds leading exporter in terms of total dollars.

Seems unbelievable, but the TYPE of manufacturing that countries like Germany focus on are the high-end, high-technology stuff, and not the cheap plastic widgets we traditionally see out of China (though this is changing very, very fast).

So, the big ticket items (from huge industrial automation exports to solar and wind technology to frankly, you name it.....) allowed 85 million people to out-produce over 1 billion up until just this year. And, they have the overall standard of living to prove it.....

We should be learning from our competition.

cf
 
I am not making fun of the sentiments expressed on the thread at all, and I agree with them all, but as I was scrolling through the last half dozen posts or so, I couldn't help but have the song from "Team America: World Police" run through my head.

America! F*** yeah!

Comin' again to save the motherf***ing day! Yeah!

America! F*** yeah!


Sorry. Now back to the discussion.
 
I am not making fun of the sentiments expressed on the thread at all, and I agree with them all, but as I was scrolling through the last half dozen posts or so, I couldn't help but have the song from "Team America: World Police" run through my head.

America! F*** yeah!

Comin' again to save the motherf***ing day! Yeah!

America! F*** yeah!


Sorry. Now back to the discussion.

:laugh: I know, I myself was gonna say how "hokey" it sounds, but "come on guys let's support the home team"!
 
Apollos are the bomb! P/V loops, F/V loops, Pressure support... the list goes on. I have to say though... the darth vader sound it makes is a bit annoying... but you can turn it off.

On a more serious note from my last post, what about these sentiments? I mean, one could make the argument that people buy BMWs and Mercedes at least a little for the status.

But, I doubt many anesthesiologists are buying Apollos to make the other hospitals' anesthesiologists jealous. What is a person to do when other countries just plain make better stuff?
 
On a more serious note from my last post, what about these sentiments? I mean, one could make the argument that people buy BMWs and Mercedes at least a little for the status.

But, I doubt many anesthesiologists are buying Apollos to make the other hospitals' anesthesiologists jealous. What is a person to do when other countries just plain make better stuff?

I agree that we can't just reflexively buy American if the foreign product is orders of magnitude better. Otherwise the US companies can go on producing crap, content that some domestic sucker will buy their garbage. That just makes us all losers. Global competition is good, to an extent. For that competition to be meaningful, sometimes you have to buy the Honda even if your neighbor works for Ford.

One of the hospitals I work at now uses older Datex-Ohmedas, one uses the Drager Fabius GS. The Drager is nicer but the gulf isn't huge. The biggest difference is the Drager vent has a true pressure support mode whereas I'm stuck with SIMV on the Ohmeda. But both are absolutely adequate for delivering a safe anesthetic. If the purchasing decision were up to me, we'd have Ohmedas.

I think that in general, when the price/performance is comparable, we ought to buy US made products. How much bias to give to the US company is a personal decision but I think it should be nonzero. (And products originating in places like China ought to have a substantial negative bias ...)
 
Appreciate all the comments. Still, no one has seen or used a Datascope anesthesia machine? I did find one safety issue with them discussed in an APSF article: if using N2O, when turning the flow of the nitrous down, the O2 goes down as well but maintains a minimum of 21% oxygen. Definitely unique to Datascope. Usually when turning nitrous down the O2 stays put (although must admit it's been over 2 years since using nitrous). I'm looking for other types of issues like this or general comments regarding build quality. We're going to trial them along with GE and Drager. I'll keep you posted.
 
Buy a machine that's widely distributed, has easy to obtain service and parts.
Don't buy a cheap offbrand.
 
On a more serious note from my last post, what about these sentiments? I mean, one could make the argument that people buy BMWs and Mercedes at least a little for the status.

But, I doubt many anesthesiologists are buying Apollos to make the other hospitals' anesthesiologists jealous. What is a person to do when other countries just plain make better stuff?

Clearly, if there's a major quality gap, then alternatives are acceptable IMHO.

However, when we're speaking apples to apples, with minor differences in "neat" features, I think we REALLY need to consider the domestic manufacturer.

Indeed, we can even "clue them in" on what "might have been" a deal breaker, so that they may incorporate similar features in future models. This happens all the time, and many of our competitors are experts in industrial espionage. This is reality and I'll quote sources if need be.
Someday, my friend, it may be YOU who gets laid off because some Indian dude (from India) can do your job for 1/4 the rate that you require. That hits home a little more now doesn't it?

We need to consider ALL of the ramifications of our decisions, such as local prosperity, the trickle down effect, property taxes, contributions to US institutions (including higher learning), scholarships, internships available to US students (like Gimlet indicated), and overall prosperity of America.

We MUST consider this in our decision making. Period. OR, we can continue with our "free market" ideology which we're the only fools on the block practicing.

To elaborate, I've heard many on this forum complain that while GM has made major quality strides, they just "can't stand the fact that it's now "Government Motors" and that they took TARP funds.

Yet, these same hypocrites think NOTHING about buying a Chinese product (generally 51% owned by the Chinese GOVERNMENT) over alternatives at any local store..... Give me a break.

One of my best friends is in Mergers/Acquisitions for a US firm (regional). He was doing a deal with an American firm doing business in S. Korea. He was DUMBFOUNDED at how SO MANY S. Korean manufacturers with very modest cash flow were able to secure loans in order to buy expensive equipment/machinery (from places like Germany, btw) given their cash flow. Well, my buddies client says, "it's highly subsidized by the Korean gov't, because they feel very strongly about manufacturing being a major component of their future prosperity" (end quote).

We need to change our paradigm....

cf
 
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