Diagnostic Imaging Scan - March 4, 2008 - (Page 3) Those results were seen last week in Orlando at the HIMSS meeting, where the company showed a new version of its digital dashboard and advanced features in its RIS. The enhanced dashboard alerts administrators about RIS/PACS systems problems via e-mail or cell phone text message. The RIS upgrade includes voice-activated controls and standardized reporting to allow radiologists to dictate reports from any location. In its carve-out, Onex kept what made the Kodak Health group strong and shed elements that made it weak, Hobert said. “I don’t think there is anything I really miss,” he said. There were, however, some casualties. The year-plus transition period during which Kodak sought a buyer for its health group led to the exit of several key salespeople. The uncertainty surrounding the company also led to the loss of some customers. Most, however, were in the U.S., and Carestream managed to hold onto both customers and employees in Europe and Asia, he said. The U.S. losses have since largely been recovered. “We have bounced back,” Hobert said. “People can see we are inventing and bringing out new products.” A lingering problem is the long sales cycle of PACS products. Deals closing now have been in the works for a long time. So, even though Carestream is on the rebound, many of the sales in process won’t show up on its bottom line for months to come. Its success rate, however, speaks well for the future, according to Mike Jackman, president of healthcare information solutions, who said they close half the deals they see. The trick is to increase the number. Jackman estimates that the company gets involved in only about 20% to 25% of potential PACS sales available. Increased publicity, an expanding portfolio, and a widening base of partners will help, he said, as will the company’s long-term perspective. Hobert and Jackman describe themselves and other top managers as a young team committed to the future of the company, not only as professionals but as investors. “All the members of senior management wrote checks and are owners with us,” LeBlanc said. “I tell people we own this business with management.” This liberates managers from having to run the business based on quarterly returns, he said, and instead allows them to focus on long-term relationships with customers. “They are with me shoulder to shoulder because they are owners,” LeBlanc said. “That’s different than being part of a big conglomerate. It makes customer service better.” to combine anatomical and metabolic images from MR, PET, CT, ultrasound, and angiography, as well as display dynamic images acquired during cardiac and metabolic studies. Siemens has installed its nextgeneration linear accelerator, Artiste, at the company’s first U.S. site, Baton Rouge General Medical Center’s Pennington Cancer Center in Louisiana. Iron Mountain has struck alliances with Dejarnette Research Systems and HP to extend its data protection and storage services in the medical imaging field. The company will use DeJarnette’s PACS Migration Services to migrate customers’ medical images into its newly developed disaster recovery and long-term archiving system, Digital Record Center for Medical Images. This system, powered by HP’s Medical Archive Solution, is designed for long-term archival storage of medical fixed content data. Iron Mountain and HP will jointly market and sell two service offerings. Radiology benefits manager Care to Care has signed Touchstone Health HMO, a privately held HMO focused on the Medicare market. The deal expands Care to Care’s client portfolio to more than 700,000 patients. InSight plans to sell six of its diagnostic imaging centers in Southern California to RadNet Management for $8.5 million. The two firms expect to complete the transaction in March. The FDA has cleared a 5-megapixel flat-panel monitor from NEC Display Solutions of America. The MammoSite Radiation Therapy System from Hologic produced clinical results comparable to other forms of accelerated partial breast irradiation, as researchers found the device logistically simpler, technically more reproducible, and patient-friendly, according to a study published Feb. 15 in Cancer, the journal of the American Cancer Society. Covidien may soon have a generic form of Cardiolite on the U.S. market. Cardiolite is currently marketed by BristolMarch 4, 2008 Siemens unveils thin-client enhancements at HIMSS WebSpace offers distributed computing for users large and small Enhancements by Siemens Medical Solutions to a web-based IT system have turned what was initially a teleradiology system into a web-enabled PACS. The metamorphosis reflects a trend in the industry toward the migration of increasingly powerful computing capabilities into web-based systems that were originally designed for less sophisticated applications. Siemens unveiled an enhanced version of syngo WebSpace Feb. 24 at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference in Orlando, FL. It features an advanced vessel segmentation algorithm, centerline editing, guided workflow, and automated measurement; keyboard function keys for predefined window/level presets; and a 2D viewing card that supports processing of CT, MR, and x-ray data. The multiple 2D tools can be used when a PACS is not available, said Henri “Rik” Primo, national director of marketing and strategic relationships for Siemens. “It is actually a web-enabled mini-PACS,” Primo said. The company is positioning the product primarily as a means of distributed processing for small practices and rural and urban community hospitals. WebSpace can support from three to 20 concurrent user sessions throughout the hospital network and via secure access from remote locations. Adding more servers allows more users to gain access. The most advanced applications, like those requiring volumetric reconstruction of cardiac CT scans, for example, remain beyond the grasp of WebSpace, a thin client that relies on a central server for processing. Such applications would instead have to be done on the company’s thick-client syngo Imaging PACS, which relies on high-power workstations for data processing. “When you are reading hundreds of cases a day and speed and performance are of the essence, then we would say work with a thick client,” Primo said. “But if you work remotely and want to read studies from a dif- Copyright © 1991-2008 CMP Healthcare Media Group LLC
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