Ricoh New Healthcare "Niche" MFP & Printer

A few weeks ago, one of our manufacturers reps came to our office was telling us about a new series of printers (at least that's what I thought) that were being marketed specifically for the health care industry. I had mentioned in previous blogs that I thought the industry would have more success if printers or MFP's were designed to capture certain vertical markets with features and media that was specific to to that vertical market.  Look at me, I'm now a soothsayer!

All kidding aside what Ricoh did was to give a new product designation to a few existing printers and MFP's and then marry them with some additional unique features and media capabilities.

The new Ricoh SP5210DNHW and SP5210DNHT are two of these new "health care" laser printers.  The speed is 52 pages per minute and is similar to the SP5210DN series. If you'd like to download the new health care brochure go here.

These "health care" printers include these features:

• Traylock
• Wristband printing (only SP5210DNHW)
• Portable Print Configuration
• Teflon Coating
• Locked Print
• DataOverwriteSecurity System
• Hard Disk Drive Encryption

In addition Ricoh is also is also introducing a health care version of the Ricoh SP C431DN which will be relabeled as the SP C431DNHW and also the SP C431DNHT.  The SP C431DNHT does not have the capability for the traylock and wristband features, however the SP C431DNHW can accommodate the wristband printing but no traylock feature.  My head is already spinning!  I can't keep track of these model numbers! 

One of the claim to fame features is Traylocking, Ricoh mentions in the brochure that paper trays can be locked.  Thus the health care provider can secure wristband stock, prescription paper or other expensive or sensitive media.  This is enabled by a key lock system on the paper tray.  I can only think of how many calls we'll get for lost keys, maybe a four digit pin would have been a better fit.  The four digit pint could have been saved in the admin section of Web Image Monitor.

The second unique feature is the ability for the printer to print onto "narrow media" such as identification wristbands, this media would be loaded in one of the locking paper trays.  Ricoh incorporates an innovative Teflon-coating for the paper trays that enables the trays to easily accept specialty papers and minimize misfeeds.

The third difference is the Portable Print Configuration, this is accomplished with an SD card that his populated with printer system settings that allows user to transfer print settings from one machine to another.  This is a nice feature and I could use this many times over when configuring printers in the field.  I can't tell you how many times I've had to help a customer program media, paper trays, and other settings and then they need the same settings on all of their print devices.

Yet another feature would be the locked print feature, locked print means that the user has to authenticate to the printer to release the print job.  In conjunction with the locked print feature Ricoh also offers an Hard Drive Encryption Option, which enables encryption for documents, address books, data, and passwords. Users also have the standard DiskOverwriteSecurity System to protect confidential information as to where the hard drive will overwrite latent digital images on the drive.

Dang, I really did want this to be this long, it's taking up my nap time today! 

Ricoh also offers four MFP health care solution systems, borrowing from the SP5200 ad the SP5210 series Ricoh now offers the SP5200SHW and the SP5200SHT (SHT?), both of these devices print and copy at 47 pages per minute and they offer the same configuration of the printer version.  Ricoh then offers two 52 page per minute devices designated with SP5200SFHW and the SP5210SFHT.

You can go here and download the brochure for the specifics on the MFP's as to what features they have an don't have.

In closing, I think we'll see more niche type offerings from the manufacturers as our industry continues to change.

-=Good Selling=-