In a sensitive environment like a hospital or MRI suite, I would strongly recomment to swap such parts 1:1.
Somebody must have checked their usability for this environment before, maybe even wrote a risk assessment for it.
If you put in a 50$ dimmer, you take over the responsibility, if problems develop.
When you start thinking about the money burnt and mis-used in medical care, (as in many many other fields) you will not get any more nights sleep. I try not to think about it.
I used to work in medical electronics engineering for a short time and sometimes heard the sentence "money doesnt play a role". Thats one reason why I didnt stick with medical.
Nobody's thinking of trying a standard $50 dimmer. As I mentioned above, I read the manufacturer's documentation and it explains the difference in how their MRI dimmer works vs a standard dimmer. But is it worth $1300? I really doubt it. Unfortunately in the health care system we often find ourselves in this position, for many reasons, where you have no choice.
In less critical areas we don't always follow that route. For example, I have had circuit boards go on automatic door openers and have replaced them with general purpose circuit boards that can be programmed to do the same thing as the OEM part (these doors are NOT controlled by the building's fire system). Naturally, these are items that are no longer under warranty. I am not trying to save the health system $$$ with the thought that I am making a difference - that's hopeless. For many of us I think it's part of our make-up to find inexpensive solutions where it appears that we might be getting taken advantage of.
