Newswatch: April 2005

Industry Partnerships

ASRT

The American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT of Albuquerque, NM) has entered into a partnership with Imaginis Corp (Greenville, SC) that will provide radiologic technologists and radiation therapists direct access to scientific and patient care information for women's health. ASRT has provided a direct link to the Imaginis Web site ( www.imaginis.com ) for technologists to use or to refer their patients to for information about various cancers and their treatment, hormone-replacement therapy, heart disease, osteoporosis, and breast health.

Evolving Solutions

Software Engineering Corp (SENCOR of Mississauga, Ontario) and Evolving Solutions (Hamel, Minn) have announced a strategic relationship to distribute medical image storage and archival solutions to US-based hospitals and diagnostic imaging centers. The two companies will deploy medical image storage and distribution software integrated with hardware that meets data-on-demand and patient protection compliance requirements.

GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare GE Healthcare (Waukesha, Wis) has selected mobile software technology from PatientKeeper (Brighton, Mass) to offer tightly integrated mobile applications that enable physicians to simultaneously view a patient's electronic health record (EHR), use clinical decision support tools, and record charges for medical treatments. Under the terms of the agreement, GE Healthcare will market and sell PatientKeeper software as Centricity Physician Office Mobile systems.

GE Healthcare also will collaborate with Intermountain Health Care (Salt Lake City) to create a best-practices-based clinical software program that will enhance the patient care process in hospitals and clinics, and accelerate the adoption of EHRs among health systems in the United States. According to GE Healthcare, the collaboration is intended to spur the development of a comprehensive way to manage the explosion of healthcare data.

HP

Hewlett-Packard (HP of Palo Alto, Calif) is making medical imaging storage and retrieval more reliable and manageable for Banner Health (Phoenix), one of the largest not-for-profit healthcare systems in the United States. Banner has selected a comprehensive HP solution to support its Arizona PACS Archive. By 2009, the archive is expected to grow to more than 1.2 petabytes of data, scaling to support seven medical facilities throughout central Arizona. The solution, which is powered by StorageGRID software from Bycast Inc (Vancouver), will interface with multiple existing PACS solutions.

Kodak

Eastman Kodak Co (Rochester, NY) and Heartlab Inc (Westerly, RI) have signed an agreement calling for each company to provide medical imaging and information management tools that facilitate enterprise-wide management of radiology and cardiology data. Under the terms of the agreement, Kodak will market Heartlab's Encompass line of cardiac image and data management solutions along with Kodak's DirectView PACS System 5. The agreement also allows Heartlab to market Kodak's DirectView PACS System 5 and resell Kodak's DirectView Versatile Intelligent Patient Archive software.

Kodak also announced an agreement under which Merry X-Ray Corp (San Diego) will serve as the exclusive US distributor for Kodak's new mammography CAD system, the first product for breast cancer detection from Kodak's Health Group. According to Kodak, Merry X-Ray has a broad customer base and is well-positioned to help healthcare facilities realize the advantages of Kodak's CAD solution.

NCD

National Consulting and Development Corp (NCD of Eastlake, Ohio) has entered into a partnering agreement with EDCO—the Document People Inc (Springfield, Mo). The partnership enables NCD to offer EDCO X-ray film and record storage services, as well as enables EDCO to offer NCD's image/data hosting services.