this company bought a Q650 for a few thousand, installed some specialty software on it then turned around and charged $600,000 for it.
Piffle.
Aegis is based on custom hardware accelerators and software developed by Acuson/ medical-grade printers
/ Kodak / medical color imagers
/ service and maintenance
/ At level two / up to eight ultrasound systems equipped with QV100 modules
/ At level three / high-resolution review stations / The physicians also can interact with the sonographer and decide whether an exam is complete from a remote location.
/ The Aegis system can cost up to $200,000.
emphases added
Have you any idea what a ~single~ medical grade video card would have cost in 1993? Let alone the medical grade (and most likely huge) monitor attached to it? Let alone they could expect to sell maybe a few thousand
systems max to recoup all their R&D and the regulatory & insurance nightmare of getting a therapeutic device approval?
This was a cutting edge,
medical grade, hospital-wide networked
system, which Aegis would have consulted, designed, specced, installed and supported; not a single rebadged Quadra with some software.
