Trends: Into the Light
The future of veterinary lighting is looking more high-tech, and green
In the veterinary lighting industry, much has remained the same for decades. For many years, halogen-based bulbs and their incandescent predecessors were the norm. And the basic designs for surgery lighting essentially fell into two camps: single bulbsource reflector lights, or multi-bulb “pod” lights.
However, in the past few years, exciting new technologies have emerged, bringing veterinary lighting into an entirely new era, at breakneck speed. The technology getting the most publicity is of course LED-based lighting. Another, equally important breakthrough has been the system using Metal Halide (high-intensity discharge) bulbs. Both of these exciting new developments represent a fantastic opportunity for sales in the veterinary market.
With LED lightsources, there are numerous advantages over traditional halogen, such as much cooler light output, cooler overall emission of ambient heat from the fixture, higher color temperatures and the most noticeable feature – the incredibly long life of the LEDs. In fact, LED technology has grown so quickly that the average life of these lightsources is now 50,000 hours. With that in mind, the owner of an LED-based surgery light may well find that they never require an LED replacement. In other words, the entire light fixture may age to the point of replacement, before the LEDs. Clearly, this is a huge leap in technology for veterinary lighting.
The other technology is the Metal Halide (high intensity discharge) bulb system for surgery lighting fixtures. While the LED systems boast all the aforementioned qualities, the metal halide-based lights provide the highest level of efficiency to be found in surgery lights today. As with the LED systems, metal halide provides higher color temperature than halogen-based bulbs. But the metal halide eclipses LED units with even lower electrical consumption. A stunning example: a traditional halogen-based surgery light of 100,000 lux output, using a 150 watt halogen bulb, emitting a color temperature of 4,000º Kelvin and a commensurate amount of heat for that type of fixture is compared with an exact same-sized fixture supplied with metal halide bulbsource which produces 100,000 lux output, an improved color temperature of 4,300º Kelvin, and gives off virtually no heat! Additionally, the halogen bulb provides only about 1,000 hours of life while the metal halide bulb provides over 10,000 hours. Perhaps most importantly in this era of need for higher efficiencies, the metal halide light uses 74 percent less electricity than the comparable halogen light.
Bottom line: both LED and metal-halide technologies represent the biggest and most important change in the fundamentals of veterinary lighting to date. Clearly, we now live in a time when increased efficiencies and all other aspects of “green” products are of serious importance. In the area of veterinary lighting, these new technologies are indeed a welcome change, providing dramatically improved lighting products emitting considerably lower heat, major increases in the life of bulbs or lightsources, and operating on a fraction of electricity consumed by older style fixtures.
Today, more than ever, purchasers of new veterinary lighting equipment will benefit from properly researching what types of lightsources are available. And all sales personnel should be aware of the huge potential that awaits them. Not only in the area of normal new lighting sales, but also for sales of replacement lighting, due to the fact that now, unlike any time in the past, there is great replacement potential stemming from the major technological improvements offered in these new products. Veterinary lighting is undergoing a major-change of technology which the savvy sales rep should indeed be aware of.
March 25th, 2010 at 4:43 am
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March 27th, 2010 at 5:49 am
[...] post by admin and software by Elliott Back contact gasmedix at 1-888-830-2081 or email at sales @ [...]