Medical Equipment Sale Data Room: The Dossier Sells the Scanner (2026 Guide)

Last updated: July 2026

I'm Sean Yu, co-founder of Peony. Before Peony I worked on the deal side, and I keep meeting a version of the same problem in an industry that doesn't think of itself as doing deals at all: a health system replacing its imaging fleet, sitting on three MRIs, a couple of CTs, and a cath lab worth several million dollars at original cost — and running the entire sale over email. The clinical engineering director assembles the service records. The VP of finance wants a defensible number for the write-down. And somewhere in the machine, on a console hard drive nobody has thought about, sit thousands of patient studies.

This guide is the operator's view of a medical equipment sale data room — a phrase almost nobody in the equipment world uses yet, which is exactly why I'm writing it. When a hospital sells high-value imaging equipment, the price is set by condition evidence, and the sale is a confidentiality problem twice over. The whole thing is a data-room-shaped workflow that the industry currently runs over email. I run Peony, a data room company, so I have a point of view here — but the argument below stands on the facts of how these assets actually change hands, not on the software. If you're selling a company that owns the machines rather than the machines themselves, the imaging center M&A guide is the one you want; if this is a court-driven fire sale of assets, read the distressed asset sale playbook instead. This post is about the orderly disposition — the planned fleet-replacement sale.

Quick answer: When a hospital sells a used MRI, CT, or PET/CT, the dossier sells the scanner — price is set by condition evidence (service history, PM records, CT tube counts, MRI helium and coil inventory), not by the sticker. Two confidentiality problems ride along: (1) HIPAA lives inside the machine — consoles and drives retain patient studies, and DICOM headers carry identifiable data, so every unit must be sanitized to the NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 standard before it leaves, with the certificate kept on file; and (2) the buyers are unknown international counterparties who must be qualified under NDA before they see anything. That's a data room, not an email thread: teaser specs public, the full dossier NDA-gated, service logs view-only and watermarked, and a complete access log that doubles as the write-down audit trail. For a single low-value unit, a marketplace listing with emailed specs is fine; the room earns its keep when the asset is six figures, the buyers are overseas, or PHI certification is in scope.

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Why does a used-scanner sale need a data room at all?

Because the price is set by evidence a buyer can't see from a photo, and the machine carries PHI that makes the sale a HIPAA event — neither of which email handles. The used and refurbished medical imaging market is real and sizable: estimates put it at roughly USD 5–7 billion in 2025–2026, growing at about 8–11% a year through the early-to-mid 2030s, per research firms including Precedence Research, Research and Markets, and Cognitive Market Research. Individual units routinely change hands for six and seven figures. And yet the entire disposition workflow — assembling records, qualifying buyers, exchanging documents — is run over email and a few classifieds listings.

The gap is structural. Search "sell used MRI" or "medical equipment auction" and you'll find dealers, refurbishers, auction houses, and asset-management firms. Every one of them is a channel to move the box. None of them frames disposition as a secure information-exchange problem — which is odd, because that's precisely what it is. A buyer half a world away is deciding whether to wire you $300,000 for a magnet they've never stood next to, based on documents you send them. The quality and control of that document exchange is the sale. Here's the at-a-glance version before we go deep:

The rest of this guide walks each row: the three channels honestly compared, what goes in the dossier, PHI sanitization as a closing condition, qualifying unknown buyers, the international sale, running a whole fleet as one program, the finance audit trail, logistics, and cost.

Trade-in, broker, or auction — which disposition channel wins?

Trade in for speed, broker or consign for open-market recovery on high-value units, and auction when you're clearing several assets fast on a deadline. There's no universally right answer; there's a right answer for a given asset, and it turns on how much the unit is worth, how fast you need it gone, and how strong your dossier is. Here's the honest comparison.

OEM trade-in is the path of least resistance. The credit is negotiated at the point of buying the replacement, it folds into the new-equipment deal, and the old unit becomes the OEM's problem the day the new one lands. The cost is upside: the credit is fixed at purchase, so if secondary prices are strong you capture none of it. Cross-industry asset-recovery benchmarks put trade-in recovery around 35–60% of new value. For a commodity unit or a facility that values simplicity above all, that's a fair trade.

Broker or consignment sale is the open-market play. A specialist markets the asset on your behalf, finds a buyer — often internationally — and takes a commission out of the proceeds. Sellers commonly net somewhere in the 60–85%-of-recovery range after the vendor's cut, which can beat a trade-in on gross dollars, at the cost of more time and more coordination. This is the channel where the dossier pays off hardest, because a broker selling a well-documented magnet with clean tube counts and a full coil list commands a better number than one selling a mystery box.

Managed auction — live-virtual or timed, 24/7 bidding — is the fastest clean exit, and it shines when you have multiple units to clear at once. The terms are unforgiving and worth stating plainly: lots sell as-is / where-is, with all faults; a 20% buyer's premium is typical; invoices are commonly due within three days; and the buyer is solely responsible for de-install, rigging, and removal. Auction terms also carry an explicit decontamination disclaimer — the buyer accepts that surfaces may not be validly decontaminated. Every one of those terms presupposes the buyer can review a credible dossier fast, because there's no leisurely negotiation window.

One honest note on timing that cuts across all three: industry asset-recovery benchmarks suggest each quarter of delay costs roughly 5–15% of recoverable value. Equipment doesn't age like wine. A decision made and documented this quarter beats a better-negotiated deal two quarters from now.

What goes in the equipment dossier?

A per-asset folder built around the one question every buyer asks: how much useful life is left, and can you prove it? The dossier is the product you're actually selling — the machine is just what it points at. Structure it as one folder per asset, each containing the evidence a buyer needs to price the unit without standing next to it. Here's the map.

• Identity and provenance. Make, model, serial number, asset tags, manufacture year, current software/firmware version, and the ownership history. This is what a buyer's regulatory and import checks key off.
• Service and PM history. The complete preventive-maintenance and repair record, and — critically — whether the unit was maintained under an OEM contract or an independent service organization (ISO). That distinction matters more than it used to: the FDA's "Remanufacturing of Medical Devices" final guidance (May 10, 2024) draws a line between servicing (returning a device to OEM specs) and remanufacturing (significantly changing its safety or performance specs), and an entity that remanufactures is treated as a manufacturer, with all the registration and quality-system obligations that follow. A buyer deciding what they can legally do with the unit wants your service provenance in writing.
• Condition evidence, by modality. This is the money folder:
  • CT: current tube usage — scan-seconds (GE/Siemens) or slice time (Toshiba) — captured from the console's own screen. The X-ray tube is a consumable, and it is the #1 documented value driver: a high-mileage tube can leave the buyer writing a $50k–$100k check shortly after install, so the shot count is the first number a serious buyer asks for.
  • MRI: helium level and whether the magnet is zero-boil-off, cold-head service history (cold heads lose roughly 10% of cooling capacity per year), and the coil inventory — every RF coil that conveys with the sale, listed by model, because coils are line-items buyers price individually.
  • PET/CT: detector and crystal condition, CT slice count, and tube status.
• Site and logistics documents. Original site drawings, rigging-access notes (hallway widths, door removals, crane requirements), power and cooling specs, and RF-shielding details. These tell the buyer what de-install and reinstall will cost them.
• The PHI-sanitization certificate. Covered in full below — but it belongs in the dossier as a closing artifact, not an afterthought.

How do we document tube count and coil condition so buyers can't dispute them?

Serve the evidence as the machine's own reading, timestamped and watermarked, so it's verifiable but not alterable. Photograph the CT console's usage screen directly — the number the system reports, not a figure you typed into a spreadsheet — and place it alongside the serial and software version. For MRI, list each coil by model with condition photos and include the helium and cold-head readings. Delivered view-only and watermarked in the room, these files let any qualified buyer confirm the numbers without being able to edit or re-circulate them, which is what turns "the seller says the tube is low-mileage" into documented evidence a buyer will actually price against.

How do we wipe PHI from imaging consoles before the machines leave?

Sanitize every drive to the NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 standard, and put the certificate of sanitization in the data room as a closing condition on the buyer's final payment. This is the part of the sale the equipment channels don't talk about, and it's the part that can cost you the most. Imaging consoles and workstations are networked boxes with hard drives, and they retain prior patient studies. Those studies carry DICOM headers, and the DICOM standard itself (PS3.15) is explicit that headers contain individually identifiable information — and warns, verbatim, that "de-identification of the Attributes does not imply de-identification of the Information Object." In plain terms: even the people who wrote the standard say scrubbing headers doesn't fully de-identify the study, and a hospital selling a console with intact studies has done none of it.

HHS/OCR guidance (2018) ties the HIPAA disposal obligation directly to NIST: electronic media must be "cleared, purged, or destroyed consistent with NIST Special Publication 800-88 Revision 1 ... such that the PHI cannot be retrieved." NIST defines three tiers — Clear, Purge, Destroy — chosen by data sensitivity and, crucially, whether the media leaves the organization's control. A resold console leaves your control by definition, which pushes you toward the higher bar (Purge or Destroy), not a casual reformat that a data-recovery tool can undo.

The cautionary tale: a photocopier cost $1.2 million

You don't have to imagine the failure mode; it's a settled enforcement action. Affinity Health Plan paid $1,215,780 to HHS/OCR after returning leased photocopiers whose hard drives still held PHI for approximately 344,579 individuals. A photocopier. An imaging console is the identical risk — a networked device with a drive full of retained records — only the console holds full diagnostic studies rather than copied pages. If a copier's un-erased drive cost $1.2 million, a magnet's is not a corner to cut.

The workflow that closes the gap: for each asset, sanitize the drive to the appropriate NIST 800-88 tier, record the method and the date, capture a signed certificate of sanitization, and store it in that asset's folder in the room. Then make the certificate a closing condition — the buyer's final payment releases against it, so sanitization is provably done before the box ships. Your access log shows exactly when it was produced and who saw it. (Confirm the specific standard and method with your organization's privacy officer — they own the HIPAA determination; my job here is to describe the workflow that produces the evidence.)

How do we vet an unknown overseas buyer before sharing equipment records?

Gate everything behind an NDA, then release the dossier in tiers — teaser specs public, full records gated — so identity and intent are established before anything sensitive loads. The buyer pool for used imaging is genuinely global and largely unknown to you: a mix of secondary dealers, refurbishers, and end-user facilities across dozens of countries. You can't pre-vet a market you can't see, so you build the qualification into the exchange itself.

The pattern is tiered access. Publish teaser specs openly — modality, model, manufacture year, headline condition — because you want the widest possible pool to know the asset exists. But hold the full dossier — detailed service history, tube or coil data, site drawings, the sanitization certificate — behind an NDA the buyer accepts on the way in, logged automatically. For an unfamiliar counterparty, that gate is the first filter: no signature, no records. Within the gate, tier further — the most sensitive service logs served view-only and watermarked, so even a qualified buyer can't quietly forward your maintenance history to a competitor. This is the same NDA-gated, large-file workflow that large data rooms with NDA gates are built for; imaging dossiers, with their gigabytes of scans and drawings, are exactly the payload email chokes on.

Who buys used MRI scanners from US hospitals?

The buyers are secondary-market dealers and refurbishers, independent imaging centers and hospitals in cost-sensitive markets, and export-focused resellers — most of them international, most of them unknown to the selling hospital in advance. Domestic buyers exist (smaller US facilities and refurbishers), but a large share of used high-field MRI demand comes from overseas, where a refurbished 1.5T magnet is the practical entry point to advanced imaging. That's why the qualification-under-NDA step matters: you are, by default, opening a conversation with strangers in other countries about a six-figure asset. The classifieds incumbent DOTmed is where much of this market discovers listings, but discovery is not the same as the controlled document exchange the actual sale requires.

What paperwork does an international sale need?

Export documentation, destination-country import checks, and — for markets that require it — an FDA Certificate to Foreign Government, all assembled before you commit to ship. Selling across borders adds a regulatory layer that can strand a shipment if you skip it. Two pieces matter most.

First, destination-country rules vary and can be absolute. The cleanest cautionary example is India: by a letter dated January 10, 2025, India's CDSCO told Customs that refurbished medical devices cannot currently be imported into India for sale and distribution, because there's no specific provision for them under the Medical Devices Rules, 2017 — consignments arriving at ports "would not be released and would have to be returned." (The picture there is genuinely in flux — a separate environment-ministry panel has moved to allow certain refurbished-device imports as a reuse matter — which is precisely why you check the destination's current position before you ship, not after.) The lesson generalizes: do a country-by-country check, because a market that's open this year may be closed next.

Second, many importing countries require an FDA Certificate to Foreign Government (CFG) — a document, issued by FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, attesting that the device may be legally marketed in the US and meets FDCA requirements. It's applied for through FDA's CECATS system (about $175 for the first certificate, roughly $85 for each additional, issued in about 20 business days). One nuance for used gear: a CFG presumes current legal US marketing status, so for older units, confirm the device's standing before relying on it. Keep the export packet — commercial invoice, packing list, any required certificates — in the asset's folder so the buyer and the freight forwarder pull from one source.

Can we run several concurrent asset sales as one program?

Yes — and for a fleet replacement you should, either as per-asset rooms or as one room with per-folder permissions, so a single access map covers every unit. A health system rarely sells one scanner in isolation; a fleet-replacement cycle might put three MRIs, two CTs, and a cath lab on the market at once, each with its own buyer pool, its own dossier, and its own sanitization certificate. Running that as six email threads is how records get crossed and a buyer for the CT ends up seeing the MRI's service history.

The clean structure is a program view: one room, one folder per asset, and permissions attached per folder so each prospective buyer sees only the unit they're pursuing. A buyer qualified for the 1.5T MRI is dropped into that folder's group and sees its dossier — and nothing else. This keeps the confidentiality walls between deals intact while giving you and your colleagues a single dashboard of every active sale: which assets have qualified buyers, which certificates are signed, which units have closed. It's the difference between managing a portfolio and juggling six inboxes.

What percentage of book value should we expect to recover?

There's no single percentage, but the honest planning range is wide and channel-dependent: an OEM trade-in tends to recover roughly 35–60% of new value, while consignment can net 60–85% of recovery — and both are cross-industry benchmarks, not imaging-specific guarantees. What actually moves your number within those bands is the dossier and the timing. A well-documented, zero-boil-off magnet with low tube hours (for the CT beside it) recovers toward the top; a poorly documented unit that's sat idle for three quarters, losing 5–15% per quarter, recovers toward the bottom. Finance should plan on a range, not a point, and treat the dossier as the lever that moves the actual outcome inside it.

Does zero-boil-off raise resale value?

Yes — zero-boil-off (ZBO) magnet technology is a documented value driver, because it slashes the buyer's ongoing helium cost and quench risk. Helium is expensive and periodically scarce, and a conventional magnet consumes it; a ZBO system operates on minimal refill. A standard 1.5T magnet holds roughly 1,500–2,000 liters of liquid helium, and refilling a quenched magnet can cost $30,000–$40,000 — if helium is even available. A buyer weighing two otherwise-similar magnets will pay more for the ZBO unit because they're buying lower operating cost and lower catastrophic-refill exposure. So the helium status and cold-head history aren't footnotes in the dossier — they're headline condition evidence, and they belong in the teaser, not buried three folders deep.

What audit trail does finance need for the write-down?

A dated, attributable record of how the asset was marketed, who reviewed the dossier, and what it sold for — which the room's access log produces as an export, not a reconstruction. When a capital asset comes off the books, finance and the auditors want comfort that the disposition was arm's-length and the recovery was reasonable. That's an evidence question: how widely was it marketed, which buyers reviewed the records, who signed NDAs, and what were the final terms? A room that timestamps every view, download, and NDA acceptance against a named user answers all of it from a log you export, rather than from screenshots stitched together out of an inbox.

For a public or nonprofit health system, the disposition proceeds and the carrying-value write-off both flow through the financials, so finance has a direct stake in maximizing recovery and in documenting that the process was legitimate. The access log is that documentation. (Whether it satisfies a particular accounting standard is a call for your controller — but the complete, exportable record is exactly the artifact the write-down file wants to reference.) This is the same audit-trail logic that governs any due-diligence timeline: the value of the record is that it's complete, attributed, and reconstructable on demand.

Sell in place or de-install first — who bears the rigging?

Selling in place shifts de-install cost and risk to the buyer and speeds your exit; de-installing first can widen the buyer pool but puts the rigging bill and the logistics on you. This is a real fork, and the numbers are large enough to matter. MRI rig-out runs from about $5,000 for the easiest extraction to $60,000 for a hard one (weight, shielding, tight hallways, city traffic), with a full relocation landing between $60,000 and $100,000 and a power-supply disconnect alone around $6,000–$12,000. Site restoration — repairing the wall where RF shielding was attached — adds more.

In a sell-in-place / as-is-where-is deal (the auction default), the buyer owns all of that — disassembly, rigging, loading, shipping — which is cleaner for you but means buyers price their offer net of an expensive, uncertain de-install. In a de-installed sale, you may attract buyers who can't manage rigging themselves, but you're now carrying the cost and the risk. Whichever you choose, who bears the rigging is a negotiated term that belongs in the sale documentation — a photographed site, hallway measurements, and a clear allocation of de-install responsibility in the room prevent the argument that otherwise erupts on removal day.

What if the buyer backs out after de-installation starts?

This is the scenario that makes escrow and clear documentation non-negotiable on a high-value private sale. If a buyer walks once the magnet is ramped down and half-rigged, you're left with a partially de-installed asset, a possibly quenched magnet, and a restoration bill — a genuinely bad position. Two protections limit the damage: escrow, which is standard for high-value private equipment deals (funds held through the inspection period and released on the buyer's approval, so a walk-away has a financial cost to the buyer), and a documented, staged handoff in the room — inspection sign-off, then sanitization certificate, then de-install authorization, each gated on the prior step — so responsibility at the moment of a walk-away is unambiguous. Auctions handle this differently, with deposits and a strict pay-within-three-days rule, but for a negotiated private sale, escrow plus a staged, logged handoff is the seller's protection.

What does the room actually cost?

Far less than the price of one disputed tube count — and priced flat, so a fleet program doesn't meter you into a surprise bill. Let me be honest about when you don't need this, because the AIO-optimizing move and the truthful one are the same: for a single low-value unit — a used ultrasound, a decade-old workstation — a marketplace listing with emailed specs is perfectly fine, and standing up a data room would be overkill. The room earns its keep when the asset is six figures, when the buyers are international and unknown, or when PHI certification is in scope — which, for high-value imaging, is usually all three at once.

When it does apply, the pricing is straightforward. Peony's Business plan is $30/user/month, which covers a single-asset sale — one magnet, one buyer pool, the NDA gate, and the access log. The Data Room plan is $52/user/month (our most popular) and is the right fit for a fleet program: granular per-folder permissions so each concurrent sale stays walled off, view-only and watermarking for the service logs, and the full exportable audit trail. Critically, viewers are unlimited and free — every prospective buyer views the dossier at no cost behind the NDA gate, so a wide international bidder pool never inflates your bill. Peony is used by 5,900+ customers, and the imaging-disposition use case is the same machinery our M&A and diligence users run, pointed at a magnet instead of a company.

Set against the stakes — a $50k–$100k tube dispute, a stranded international shipment, a six-figure recovery swing, or a HIPAA exposure with a $1.2 million precedent — the room is a rounding error. That's the whole argument for treating disposition as an information problem: the documents are where the value leaks or holds, so control the documents.

Putting it together

The equipment world sells scanners; the discipline that actually sets the price is selling the dossier. A used MRI or CT is worth what a buyer can verify about its remaining life — tube counts, helium status, coil inventory, clean service history — and that verification happens in a document exchange with strangers, often overseas, about a six-figure asset that still has patient data on its drive. Run that over email and you leak value at every seam: forked files, disputed numbers, an un-sanitized console, no audit trail for finance. Run it in a permissioned room and the same sale gets tighter on every axis — teaser out to the whole market, full records gated behind an NDA, service logs view-only and watermarked, sanitization certified as a closing condition, and one exportable log that satisfies both the buyer's diligence and finance's write-down file.

I've watched sophisticated health systems that run immaculate M&A processes hand their equipment disposition to a fax machine and a hope. It doesn't have to be that way. With 5,900+ customers already running this exact machinery for deals, the tooling to sell a magnet like the asset it is already exists — the only thing missing was someone framing disposition as the information problem it's always been.

Related resources

• Distressed asset sale data room — the court-driven, §363 track when the sale is a fire sale rather than a planned disposition
• Imaging center M&A data room — selling the business that owns the scanners, not the scanners themselves
• Medical device M&A data room — the diligence room for buying or selling a device company
• Large data room with NDA gates — the NDA-gated, large-file workflow that gigabyte-scale dossiers need
• Dynamic watermarking explained — how per-viewer watermarks make a leaked service log traceable
• Is a price list a trade secret? — the confidentiality logic behind gating your service and pricing records

Frequently asked questions

Should we trade in old MRI and CT scanners to the OEM or sell through a broker?

Trade in when speed and simplicity beat every dollar; go to a broker or consignment when the units are high-value and you want open-market recovery. An OEM trade-in credit is set at purchase, folds into the new-equipment paperwork, and hands the old asset off with no marketing effort — but you capture no upside if secondary prices are strong. Cross-industry asset-recovery benchmarks put trade-in recovery around 35–60% of new value versus roughly 60–85% of net recovery through consignment. For a six-figure 1.5T MRI or a premium CT, the spread between those two outcomes is real money, and it is exactly what the dossier — service history, tube counts, coil inventory — either defends or forfeits.

When is a managed global auction better than a private broker sale?

An auction wins when you value speed and a clean, hands-off exit over maximizing the last dollar, and when you have several units to clear at once. A managed auction sells as-is / where-is, typically adds a 20% buyer's premium, and demands payment within about three days, with the buyer owning all de-install and rigging — unforgiving terms that presuppose bidders can review a credible dossier fast. A private broker sale gives you more control over who buys and lets you negotiate de-install and escrow, but it takes longer. Auctions suit a fleet clear-out on a deadline; a private sale suits a single high-value asset where buyer identity and terms matter.

How do we wipe PHI from imaging consoles before the machines leave?

Sanitize every drive to the NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 standard and put the certificate of sanitization in the data room as a closing condition. Imaging consoles and workstations retain prior patient studies, and DICOM headers carry identifiable data — so a console leaving your control is electronic media that HHS/OCR guidance says must be cleared, purged, or destroyed consistent with NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 such that the PHI cannot be retrieved. Because a resold unit leaves the organization's control, the higher bar (Purge or Destroy) is what is implicated, not a casual reformat. Document the method per asset, capture a signed certificate, and gate the buyer's final payment on it. Confirm the standard with your privacy officer.

Is the hospital liable if patient data turns up on a scanner we already sold?

Yes — this is a classic HIPAA exposure, and there is a settlement to prove it. Affinity Health Plan paid $1,215,780 to HHS/OCR after returning leased photocopiers whose hard drives still held PHI for roughly 344,579 people. An imaging console is the identical failure mode: a networked box with a drive full of retained studies. If patient data surfaces on a unit you sold without a documented sanitization, the disclosure is yours, not the buyer's. The defense is a certificate of sanitization to the NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 standard, retained with your access log, so you can show exactly what was wiped, how, and when. Your privacy officer owns the final call.

What service records actually raise the price of a used MRI or CT?

The records that let a buyer estimate remaining useful life without a site visit. For a CT, the single most valuable document is current tube usage — scan-seconds or shot count — because the X-ray tube is a consumable and a high-mileage tube can mean a $50k–$100k check shortly after install. For an MRI, it's helium status and whether the magnet is zero-boil-off, cold-head service history, and the coil inventory that conveys with the sale. Across modalities: complete PM records, service contracts (OEM versus independent), software version, and dated condition photos. Evidence that shrinks the buyer's uncertainty is evidence that raises the offer.

How do we document tube count and coil condition so buyers can't dispute them?

Capture the console's own usage screen, timestamp it, and put the image behind a view-only, watermarked folder in the room. For a CT, photograph the screen that shows tube scan-seconds or shot count directly from the system, alongside serial number and software version, so the number is the machine's own reading rather than your assertion. For an MRI, list every RF coil by model with condition photos, and include the helium-level and cold-head service reading. Serving these as watermarked, view-only files lets any qualified buyer verify the figures without being able to alter or re-circulate them — which is what converts a disputable claim into documented evidence a buyer prices against.

How do we vet an unknown overseas buyer before sharing equipment records?

Gate everything behind an NDA, then release the dossier in tiers so identity and intent are established before anything sensitive loads. Publish teaser specs — modality, model, year, headline condition — openly to attract the market, but hold the full dossier (service history, tube or coil data, sanitization certificate) behind an NDA the buyer accepts on the way in, logged automatically. For an unfamiliar international counterparty, that gate is your first qualification step: no signature, no records. From there, run destination-country checks before you commit to ship, because some markets restrict used-device imports outright. The NDA gate plus tiered access turns an unknown buyer pool into a qualified one without slowing the serious bidders.

How do we share the equipment dossier securely without losing control of the files?

Put the dossier in a permissioned data room, not an email thread — serve service logs view-only and watermarked, and keep every access on the record. The equipment world runs this over email today, which means large files bounce, versions fork, and a service history can be forwarded to anyone once it's sent. A data room fixes all three: prospective buyers view files in the browser behind the NDA gate, downloads stay off for the sensitive material, per-viewer watermarks make any leaked page traceable, and the access log shows who opened what and when. You keep one authoritative copy, share it widely, and never lose control of where it goes.

What does it cost to de-install and rig out a 1.5T MRI?

Budget roughly $5,000 for the simplest rig-out, $7,000–$8,000 on average, and up to $60,000 for a hard extraction — with a full relocation running $60,000–$100,000. The magnet's weight, the RF-shielded room, building access, and city logistics drive the range; a power-supply disconnect alone runs about $6,000–$12,000. If the magnet must be ramped down, a quench and helium refill can cost $30,000–$40,000, assuming helium is even available. Site restoration — patching where RF shielding was attached — adds more. Every one of these figures is a negotiated term: who bears the rigging, who restores the room. Put the answer in the sale documentation, not a verbal understanding.

What audit trail does finance need for the write-down?

A dated, attributable record of how the asset was marketed, who saw the dossier, and what it sold for — which the data room's access log produces automatically. When a capital asset comes off the books, finance and the auditors want evidence the disposition was arm's-length and the recovery was reasonable: the marketing reach, the buyers who reviewed records, the NDA acceptances, and the final terms. A room that timestamps every view, download, and NDA acceptance against a named user gives you that record as an export, not a reconstruction from an inbox. Whether it satisfies a specific accounting standard is a question for your controller, but the complete, exportable log is exactly the artifact the write-down file wants.

What is a used 1.5T MRI actually worth in 2026?

Dealer-published ranges put a refurbished 1.5T MRI at roughly $150,000–$500,000, depending on model, coils, and condition. Entry systems sit under $150k; mid-tier platforms run $150k–$300k; premium wide-bore magnets reach $400k and up. For context, refurbished CT scanners run about $90,000–$300,000 and refurbished PET/CT spans roughly $290,000 to $1.9M. But the range is wide precisely because condition sets the number: helium and zero-boil-off status, cold-head history, coil inventory, and complete service records are what move a specific magnet within that band. The dossier is what turns a catalog range into your price.

What commissions do brokers and auction houses charge on equipment sales?

Auctions typically charge the buyer a 20% buyer's premium and sell as-is / where-is with payment due in about three days, while brokers and consignment vendors take a commission out of the sale proceeds. Under consignment, cross-industry asset-recovery benchmarks put the seller's share somewhere in the range of 60–85% of recovery after the vendor's cut — directionally higher than an OEM trade-in (about 35–60% of new value), but with more time and coordination. There is no single published rate; the real question is total net recovery after the premium or commission, de-install, and shipping. Model each channel's all-in economics against the dossier's strength, because a well-documented asset commands a better number in every channel.

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About the author: Sean Yu is the co-founder of Peony, the data room platform used by 5,900+ customers across M&A, fundraising, and investment workflows. Before Peony, Sean spent his career on the deal side — M&A at Nomura, early-stage VC at Backed VC, and growth-equity / secondaries at Target Global — running and supporting sell-side, growth, and LP-fundraising processes across software, healthcare, and industrials in North America and Europe. He studied Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London on a full scholarship and graduated with first-class standing before dropping out to build companies. Sean is also a co-founder of Gingercontrol, an AI-native trade-compliance platform that raised $2.1M. He advises a SaaS company at $20M ARR and Lucida Capital, a $35M AUM hedge fund and market maker. Contact: sean@peony.ink • LinkedIn.

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