Newswatch: February 2006

Contract Awards

ACUO

Acuo Technologies (St Paul, Minn) has sold 50 AcuoMed/AcuoStore software systems to the Center for Diagnostic Imaging (CDI of Minneapolis). CDI currently operates 33 imaging centers in eight states. Since installing its first PACS, CDI has been expanding its enterprise-wide radiology information and imaging systems from Merge Healthcare. In 2002, CDI partnered with Acuo to assist in managing the growth and maintain performance standards for its network.

Allscripts / IDX

HealthEast Care System (Oak Brook, Ill) has chosen to deploy the TouchWorks EHR from Allscripts (St Paul, Minn) as well as the IDX Flowcast revenue cycle management system from IDX Systems Corp (Burlington, Vt) in its clinics. "As we deploy the Allscripts EHR with the IDX system, we [expect to see] improvements to our financial performance as a direct result of providing a better overall experience for our patients, our providers, and our staff," said Ronald Strachan, VP and CIO of HealthEast Care System.

Canon Medical

Canon Medical Systems (Lake Success, NY) has been awarded a contract with Premier Inc (San Diego) to make Canon's DR solutions available to Premier Alliance hospitals and healthcare systems across the country. As part of the agreement, Premier offers the Canon CXDI-31 and CXDI-50G portable DR systems, Canon DR image viewer software, and the Canon Mobile Access Station. As a result of Canon's technology offering, Premier's Imaging Committee members invoked the technology breakthrough clause contained in Premier's existing contracts with healthcare service providers, making it possible for Premier's member hospitals to purchase Canon's portable DR system.

Commissure

Commissure Inc (New York) has announced an exclusive technology license agreement with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH of Boston) to license both Lexicon Mediated Entropy Reduction (LEXIMER) and Radiology Order Entry (ROE) technology. LEXIMER—invented by Keith Dreyer, vice chairman of radiology–informatics at MGH—is an advanced engine used to automatically classify unstructured radiology reports through the use of natural language processing. Commissure will use this technology to provide superior quality assurance through its RadWhere suite application to individual healthcare facilities. In addition to LEXIMER technology, the appropriateness criteria and decision support rules of ROE will bring a host of new features to Commissure's current RadPort Suite application.

FONAR

FONAR Corp (Melville, NY) has announced its 16th sale in Texas of its Upright MRI. Physicians Stand-Up MRI (Hurst, Tex) is the 22nd FONAR customer to make repeat purchases of the Upright MRI. "We are excited to be among the first to incorporate upright-position MRI technology in our business plan," said Clint Sands, president and CEO of Physicians Stand-Up MRI. "Going forward, we expect to purchase another four FONAR Upright MRI scanners per year for the foreseeable future. We are very excited about the technology and the benefits it brings to patients suffering from back pain."

Kodak

Eastman Kodak Co (Rochester, NY) has announced the largest contract ever for PACS and Kodak CareStream information management solutions (IMS). The multimillion-dollar agreement with National Services Scotland (NSS of Edinburgh) positions Kodak as the leading supplier to the NSS–led Scotland National PACS e-health project. CareStream PACS will be deployed to 39 hospitals across Scotland and will be connected to an additional 67 satellite centers with X-ray departments, ultimately managing an estimated 3.2 million exams annually.

The company also announced a 3-year contract with Consorta Inc for mammography CAD. Per the agreement, Kodak will provide its Mammography CAD System available to more than 500 acute and 300 extended-care facilities nationwide. This is Kodak's third contract with Consorta. The company also has contracts with Consorta for CR and DR image capture systems, radiology and mammography films, and laser imaging systems.

Finally, Kodak now also boasts a high-profile NFL football stadium installation. The need for rapid radiographic exams for injured athletes spurred administrators for the Miami Dolphins to install a new Kodak digital X-ray capture system that processes high-resolution medical images in less than 1 minute. "It's important that our stadium have state-of-the-art imaging equipment so that team physicians can determine the seriousness of players' injuries and their ability to return to the game," said G. Eric Knowles, senior director of stadium operations and community relations for Dolphins Stadium. Stadium directors purchased a DirectView CR 825 System and a DryView 8150 laser imager for digital output onto radiographic film. The Kodak imaging system also will be used for Florida Marlins' major league baseball games and for collegiate events played at Dolphins Stadium.

McKesson

Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI of Denver) has signed an 8-year, sole-source agreement to deploy Horizon Medical Imaging PACS from McKesson Corp (Atlanta). CHI plans to deploy the technology to standardize radiology imaging service delivery at selected hospitals in six states. Following evaluation and review, the technology will be the sole source implemented for CHI's medical imaging across the 19-state system.

Migratek

Migratek, a joint venture of LAI Technology (Homewood, Ill) and Maughan Consulting (Houston), has announced two migration projects. One project, currently under way at Meridian Regional Imaging (Mundelein, Ill), will migrate more than 100,000 studies from a DR Systems PACS to a Merge-eMed Matrix PACS. In this case, the Migratek dicomBlast appliance—which has been configured to read more than 1,000 CDs and perform a patient demographic information transformation to update all of the studies to include a common format medical record number—will be used. The updated studies have been verified and are being transferred to the Merge-eMed Matrix PACS. In another project, Migratek's Rapid Migration Services are being used to perform a Kodak to Emageon migration of 16 terabytes of data, stored on 220 DLT tapes. When the project is complete, more than 650,000 studies will be migrated.

Thinking Systems

Advanced Imaging of Port Charlotte (AIPC of Port Charlotte, Fla), a new state-of-the-art multimodality imaging center, has selected ThinkingPACS from Thinking System (Tampa, Fla). The system will manage images from MRI, CT, PET, SPECT, and digital mammography. The sale was made by GE Walker Inc (Tampa, Fla), master distributor of Thinking Systems in the United States. The decision follows implementation of two previous PACS solutions from major vendors that did not fit the complex demands and in-depth image analysis that AIPC radiologists required.

Toshiba

Toshiba America Medical Systems (TAMS of Tustin, Calif) has announced an agreement to provide the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center (BMC of Baltimore) with its Aplio CV ultrasound system for use in a groundbreaking clinical trial. The Aplio CV, TAMS' all-digital ultrasound system for advanced cardiac applications, will enable clinicians in the BMC's Department of Noninvasive Cardiac Imaging to conduct a high volume of cardiovascular echocardiography procedures. Under the terms of the agreement, the Aplio CV will be used for 30 months in a clinical study in conjunction with TAMS' Aquilion 64 CFX, a volumetric 64-slice CT system.