This report originally appeared in the June 2010 issue of DOTmed Business News

The move toward digital technology is infiltrating the cardiac stress testing market - and fast. While 75 percent of the market still uses a traditional stress test, professionals in the industry expect a complete transition to digital within three to five years.

But the push toward digital systems - PC-based modalities - isn't being done to improve the accuracy or efficacy of the actual tests. In fact, the majority of tests being done today are very similar to those performed for the last few decades and there seems to be little reason to change them. Instead, using a PC-based system allows physicians to have access to their patients' records and test results all in a neat, easily accessible electronic medical record (EMR).

"It's not just stress tests [that are moving toward digital]," says Gordon Huckestein, general manager of EdanUSA. "It's every diagnostic test out there. Everything is migrating toward the PC because of the fact that doctors are required to have a medical record system. That is really driving the growth."

Michael Moore, the director of sales for Nasiff Associates, Inc., points out that while about 80 percent of doctors today do not use PC-based systems, he expects that in just five years, half of those systems will be replaced by a PC-based stress test.

"That is the future that has to be," Moore says.

With the growing number of health care providers beginning to use electronic medical records, a PC-based system would allow for a "smooth" transition from test system to a patient's electronic record, says Moore.

Huckestein also acknowledges that benefit. Having a PC-based system allows physicians to seamlessly go through a test and have that information reported right into their patients' records.

"Doctors realize, 'If I am going to have to convert my results into a digital format, I might as well already be on the PC when performing the diagnostic procedure,'" he says. "This eliminates the extra step of uploading."

Stress test manufacturers recognize the trend, but it was Nasiff Associates, Inc. that came out with the first PC-based PC ECG/PC EKG system 20 years ago.

"As you can imagine, when Nasiff designed the PC system in 1989, it was not as accepted as it is today because computers were not as common in a physician's office," Moore says.

But now, older stress testing machines are on the outs.

"Most of our old stress machines will be obsolete in about 10 years," says Bulent Buyukoglu, manager of USmedevice, LLC.

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