Following November’s exclusive deal with Photolibrary for U.K. representation, London-based Medicimage has announced distribution partnerships with 23 other agencies. This new global sales network covers 30 countries split into five regions: the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East and Australasia.
New Medicimage partners include well-known image companies, such as Japan’s Aflo and Germany’s Bilderberg and Mauritius, alongside smaller agencies. Medicimage is also pursuing additional partnerships to secure multiple distributors in key markets—for example, in the U.S., where it already has such agreements with 3D4 Medical, Photolibrary, Phototake, The Medical File and Visuals Unlimited.
Near-future expansion plans focus on Asia, central Europe and South America. Medicimage co-founder David Davis said the company is plans to limit the total number of sales partners to 50, in order to offer adequate support to each. In addition to regular updates of the image collection, Medicimage plans to participate in joint regional marketing campaigns.
Launched last summer, Medicimage aims to own the narrow niche of high-end medical imagery and video by gathering exclusive content. Other players in this space include German medicalpicture, which recently launched an education-targeting subscription product, and Ireland-based Moore Film, owner of the slightly smaller-sized MedicalRF and 3D4Medical collections, respectively distributed by Corbis and Getty Images.
During three years of pre-launch research and planning, Medicimage has secured long-term exclusive agreements with a number of hospitals in Europe and Africa, gaining exclusive access to film procedures and staff, as well as to syndicate the resulting content.
The current Medicimage inventory includes over 100,000 stills and hundreds of hours of broadcast-quality video. Subject range from relatively common photos of dental procedures to pulsating footage of open-heart surgery and images of rare diseases such as Mycetoma, a life-threatening bacterial or fungal condition common developing world farmers.
The beta Medicimage Web site offers an array of products and services.
Medicimage has developed a number of gadgets to make it easy for buyers to use its image library. These include search plug-ins for Explorer and Firefox, as well as a desktop toolbar that works not only with Macs and PCs, but also on Linux-based systems. There are also two Google-compatible products: and iGoogle gadget and a Google toolbar button.
In addition to photo, video and illustration sections, the company provides descriptive texts—such as a news backgrounder on melanoma—and audio clips. Available MP3 files include discussions by consulting medical professionals, and Medicimage also offers podcast-development services and plans an Internet radio station. Also in plans is an online shop.
Medicimage also runs a non-profit foundation that aims to improve the quality of medical education, training and research in developing nations. The foundation offers its members unrestricted access to the Medicimage library for education, training and research purposes.