RE:"A revolution, not an evolution..."And, to answer my own question: Steripro has just installed its first VP4 (of many to replace their Sterrad's?) at their Mississauga, Ontario facility. IMHO, management there obviously wants to be a leader in the field and knows that, with the VP4's significant improvements in load/cycle efficiencies and costs over all previous technologies, the future of low temperature sterilization lies with TSO3, (and so do enhanced profits for their company).
I don't anticipate, as I have mentioned, that there will be a flood of market penetration in this quarter or the next: recall that in the Q&A at the Liolios conference reference was made to Sterrad only selling 50 of their low temp sterilizer years ago in their first year then 5000 some 5 or 6 years later, (though, of course, this old sterilizer couldn't hold a candle to the VP4 and didn't and doesn't have a sniff of the breadth of claims for long complex multichannel scopes that the VP4 has). (BTW, I'm not dissing the car counting: it's quaint and must be fun!) The health care field is just often very slow to adapt to new evolving standards of care and to adopt new technologies.
But, be patient: once the early adopters and other health care leaders like Steripro show how reliably and cost-effiiciently the VP4 functions, by allowing sterilization of multiple simple or complex scopes in one large time-efficient load, and once the lawyers and the public put more pressure on the industry (and the FDA) to recognize this unique patented solution to the huge yet barely acknowledged problem of dirty scopes, the market will wake up to the unquestionable superiority of this technology and TSO3 will be opening new facilities in N. America, Europe, and elsewhere to keep up with demand.
I can easily forsee a time when manufacturers of scopes will be coming to TSO3 to collaborate on product design to be sure their instruments comply with this new industry standard so that only sterile scopes will be used for all endoscopic procedures including bronchoscopy, colonscopy, duodenoscopy (ERCP), gastroscopy...
And, I look forward to hearing more in next month's cc about not just the cost effectiveness for the end users of the increased cycles over the projected 3 per day, but about what end users getting 5 cycles per unit per day will mean to TSO3's bottom line. This should show management's initial estimate of cash from consumables to be not just $25,000 per unit per year but closer to $40,000 per unit per year. Now that is what I call a profitable business and cash generator for all concerned: happy end users, employees, and shareholders.