A new version of Carestream Healthcare’s Information Management Solution (IMS) unveiled at the European Congress of Radiologists this month, is to be made available worldwide in the second quarter of this year.
The company says that the update will offer healthcare providers more convenient viewing of medical imaging exams and other patient documents, while also facilitating the integration of images with electronic medical record systems.
Carestream Health’s president of healthcare information solutions, Michael Jackman, said: “The Carestream IMS platform is already able to manage and store a wide variety of imaging studies and fixed content patient files through a centralised database registry and repository. What we are adding is the ability to provide flexible viewing and display of these diverse file types side-by-side with DICOM image data.”
He added: “In addition, our solution can help image-enable EMRs, since these systems are usually limited to transactional data and do not offer access to imaging applications.”
The IMS upgrade will equip clinicians to view laboratory and pathology reports, imaging exams, video files, DICOM images and other types of patient data through one virtual desktop anywhere, anytime, the company says.
Standards such as the XDS (cross enterprise document sharing) protocol may be used to store and retrieve the fixed content file types, and HL7 is used to receive and store reports together with clinical patient data and other documents from clinical information systems.
Access is tightly controlled by system administrators: physicians and staff may be granted either read-only or read/write privileges, and access can be further limited to individual patient files or specific exam modalities.
“Simplified access to patient information enhances the diagnostic process and simultaneously delivers improved staff and clinician productivity by negating the need to go to several locations to obtain information,” a Carestream spokesperson said.
The company are also introducing expanded features for eHealth Managed Services, which provides long-term archiving, multi-site workflow and information distribution for a per-gigabyte fee based on the type of service provided.
“Basic archiving services include remote data storage for long-term storage and disaster recovery. The platform also offers multi-site networking capabilities that allow information communication and sharing among affiliated groups, such as hospitals and clinics, or groups of imaging centers.
“Centralised radiologists, for example, can use this service to read exams from multiple facilities, eliminating the need to courier imaging studies on CDs or DVDs. Access is established through a VPN portal and continuous monitoring ensures that only authorised users are accessing information,” the company says of its service offerings.
Other systems demonstrated at ECR by Carestream included an enhanced version of its digital dashboard, offering a way to monitor equipment and storage, and a new range of digital and computerised radiography systems.
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Joe Fernandez