Automation, Inkjet and People — How Intermountain Health Produces Print · Dan Duersch & Simon Ortiz
Intermountain Health isn’t a printing company. It’s an integrated healthcare network operating across Montana, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada — but within the organization sits a highly sophisticated print operation that produces everything from patient education materials to insurance, transactional, and member communications.
With a team of just 17 caregivers, the operation combines high-volume inkjet, toner production, nearline finishing, redundancy, and increasingly automated workflows. But technology isn’t the starting point. The team first asks what the organization needs, what should be produced internally, and only then decides which technology is the right tool for the job.
And the economics are different. As an internal cost center, the objective isn’t to maximize profit but to deliver the right quality, capacity, turnaround time, and cost while supporting an organization whose primary mission is treating patients. Investments are therefore measured by return, utilization, reliability, and the value they create for the wider healthcare system.
After previously experiencing turnaround times of three to four weeks, investments in people, processes, inkjet, Tecnau finishing, and additional capacity have helped Intermountain Health bring production consistently down to just two to three days.
In this INKISH film, we discuss automation, redundancy, equipment decisions, the importance of experienced operators, and why, even with increasingly advanced technology, the people running the equipment remain absolutely essential.
And perhaps even more interestingly, Intermountain Health is now considering how its print infrastructure could potentially support other nonprofits and healthcare organizations — extending the value of its operation beyond its own network.
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Contact
Intermountain Health
84116 Salt Lake City
Utah
USA
Email : info@imail.org
Fri September 4th
You Have to Jump the River — Prima IP Goes ...
Sometimes transformation requires more than taking small steps. As Primož Štrumbelj from Prima IP puts it: if you want to cross a river, you have to jump all the way to the other side. That philosophy says a lot about Prima IP. Located just outside Ljubljana, Slovenia, the family-owned company has undergone dramatic transformation over the years. What started with traditional screen and offset printing has today become an almost entirely digital operation, covering dye-sublimation, textile printing, large-format — and now industrial digital book production. Primož describes himself as a technology enthusiast, and that curiosity has clearly influenced the company's development. But as he emphasizes in our conversation, technology alone doesn't create success. The people who operate it, develop the business, and work with customers are equally important. The latest major step was Prima IP's investment in an HP PageWide Advantage 2200, along with automated Hunkeler and Müller Martini finishing technology. Going from cut-sheet digital production to a high-capacity roll-fed inkjet platform wasn't simply another equipment purchase — it represented an entirely new production philosophy. And there was no halfway solution. With the investment, Prima IP can address the growing demand from Slovenian publishers for shorter and medium-sized book runs, while producing everything from softcover and wire-bound products to sewn and hardcover books. For many publishers, Primož explains, seeing the production environment changes their perception of digital print. What was once considered a compromise compared with offset has developed into highly automated industrial production capable of delivering excellent quality, short runs, variable products and increasingly personalized applications. And personalization is exactly where Primož sees some of the biggest opportunities ahead. Combining data, AI, digital printing and automated finishing could enable everything from personalized books and notebooks to highly targeted printed communication. At the same time, Prima IP is developing its own products while serving as a white-label production partner. The river was big. Prima IP jumped. And the journey has only just started.