Kodak Point-of-Care with ERS and ERL

Image from Castromed (Paraná, Brazil) using Kodak Point-Of-Care with Enterprise Remote Store and Enterprise Remote Link.

The Kodak Point-of-Care CR 260 System is ideal for computed radiography examinations in busy clinics and specialty practices such as chiropractors, podiatrists, and orthopaedists. It is also recommended for satellite locations, and remote sites such as military field installations.

Durable, compact, and lightweight, this system enables all imaging functions to be performed at the point of patient care with one affordable package that includes the single-plate CR reader, Kodak flexible phosphor screens, advanced image management software, and a PC based review station.

Deployed by military forces worldwide, the field-proven Kodak Point of-Care CR 140 System is ideal for remote locations. Its durable design can withstand rough handling, temperature and humidity extremes, and stresses of nature such as wind, sand, and moisture. Even in the most demanding conditions, this portable system is easy to set up and operate.

With Enterprise Remote Store and Enterprise Remote Link , Kodak Point-of-Care System wins a huge power routing and remote storage of medical images. Highlighting once again the telemedicine. Currently in operation in some clinics, the solution has great flexibility and stability.More informations: dimaxjr@gmail.com.

Pediatric design turns scary MRIs into ‘Adventures’

Even for adults, getting an MRI can sometimes be an intimating experience. For children, it can be downright scary — with 70 to 80 percent having to be sedated before they receive diagnostic imaging. That’s why GE Healthcare has been working on its Adventure Series program that uses design to tackle the very real anxiety issue that children face in hospitals. It’s one of the subjects that GE’s Bob Schwartz, General Manager of Global Design, is discussing at this morning’s “Health by Design” panel being held at GE’s healthymagination technology showcase in New York. In the audio slide show below, Bob explains how a pilot program now underway helps the fear drift away through jungle, pirate and undersea adventures that come alive right in the imaging room.

It can include creating a “Child Life Theatre” that acclimates children to the appearance, sound, and feel of medical imaging long before the scans take place; changing the look of the imaging equipment and surrounding radiography room; and rewarding children for their participation.

The end result is decreased use of sedation — and an immensely improved patient and family experience. That kind of real impact that design can have is one of the themes that the “Health by Design” panel — which includes design experts from in and outside of the healthcare industry — is addressing at this morning’s session. You can check back later today for updates from the panel discussion.

By: Ge Healthcare

Vscan pocket-sized, ultra-smart ultrasound unveiled

GE’s drive to miniaturize technologies in order to make them more mobile couldn’t be better illustrated than with the breakthrough Vscan technology that GE’s Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt unveiled during his talk tonight at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Roughly the size of a smart phone, it houses powerful ultrasound technology that can potentially redefine the way doctors examine patients. By giving doctors a view into the body from the palm of a hand, GE believes that Vscan could one day become as indispensable as the traditional physician’s stethoscope in patient exams.

Jeff Immelt is seen here unveiling the new Vscan technology to the audience at tonight’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

Pocket-sized technology like Vscan has the potential to help redefine the physical exam and improve patient care by enhancing a doctor’s ability to quickly and accurately make a diagnosis. For critical care clinicians, Vscan can offer an immediate look beyond patient vital signs with the potential to identify critical issues, like fluid around the heart, which could be a sign of congestive heart failure. And for cardiologists, Vscan provides a dependable visual evaluation of how well the heart is pumping at a glance, so they can treat patients more efficiently.

The handheld ultrasound can reduce the need for specialist referrals, which in turn can lower healthcare costs.

The Vscan debut followed Jeff’s announcement earlier in the evening about the potentially game-changing computerized system that will give real-time clinical data and treatment options to doctors. GE’s next step in developing Vscan is to work with 12 leading clinical sites throughout the world to help determine how the technology will impact patient workflow and focused exams in primary care, critical care and the cardiology practices. The ultimate goal is to develop a structural protocol for Vscan exams.

By: GE Healthcare

Vscan

Healthcare Enterprise Storage, Archival and Retrieval

A advanced solution to storage data clinical:

Healthcare Enterprises must develop data storage archival and retrieval strategies that enable compliance with regulatory procedures while delivering cost-effective data storage backup and security needs for Picture Archiving and Communication (PACS) vendor solutions.

Escalating storage demands are being driven by the need for long-term information preservation, this coupled with the need to simplify data management requires new technology and a new way of thinking. The Sun StorageTek 5800 delivers a centralized data repository representing a third-generation approach to online archival that can improve clinical information lifecycle management while offering data management, protection and retention.

Traditionally the IT department in a Healthcare Enterprise was concerned with the business of the hospital; registration, billing, insurance and in recent years, with the development of electronic medical records. The relative amount of data generated by these activities was limited when compared to the total data that is generated in the Healthcare Enterprise of today, especially with the shift to PACS scale requirements. Management of a centralized data archive solution for a Healthcare Enterprise that includes PACS images has resulted in highly manual processes for management and protection of healthcare information. Further, hospitals and imaging centers are being locked into expensive systems that are not nimble enough to accommodate continuing PACS growth. In fact, this information growth is creating multi-terabyte problems that information technology practitioners must not only deploy across existing information technology departmental islands, but be able to organize and search upon while looking toward future requirements for interoperability, health information networks and scalability.

The central IT organization must evaluate and deploy a technology solution capable of handling the large amount of image data that these digital modalities generate. As the world's first Application-Aware Programmable Storage solution, the StorageTek 5800 system, formerly known as Project Honeycomb, blurs the lines between application server and storage, giving application developers new flexibility in the way their applications are deployed. By off-loading selected data services from the application server, the system can help improve the overall application price/performance while helping to lower cost and complexity. Examples of these services include metadata management, database queries, and custom services such as image resizing. By moving portions of the application to the data, rather than moving data to the application, picture archive and communication system (PACS) providers can deliver a more flexible, higher reliability solution.

Sun StorageTek 5800 Overview

The Sun StorageTek 5800 enables healthcare customers to manage medical image archives with an application aware system, representing a totally new category of storage that allows PACS and other applications to be efficiently deployed by leveraging compute resources inside the storage environment. Data integrity and failure tolerance are also improved as well as the provision of sophisticated mechanisms for organizing and finding data amongst hundreds of millions of files. With the Sun StorageTek 5800, the Healthcare Enterprise can grow from 8 – 1,000 terabytes non-disruptively and on-demand.

Everyone in healthcare understands healthcare data has many legal retention requirements. Daily backups can have a life of several days to weeks. Patient Records, Image Data and other patient information can have very long retention requirements, these retention requirements are often dictated by Federal and State regulations. These retention rules often exceed the expected life of the archived media and require the protection of privacy. Because of this, the management of disparate islands of archives throughout many departments becomes a logistical nightmare. The Sun StorageTek 5800 solves this issue with centralization that represents a single architecture that can manage critical Healthcare Enterprise data policies for Care, Disaster Protection, Access Control and Patient Protection procedures. Eliminating the information islands throughout the Healthcare Enterprise means data integrity is also increased, protecting better than ever against data loss, misuse or unauthorized access. Auditing mechanisms mean modification of data is not allowed. Retention directives ensure images and records are intact for the appropriate lifecycle of the data. At the same time, Sun StorageTek 5800 has the ability to store arbitrary metadata and to query against it. Sun StorageTek 5800 also supports a file system interface enabling users to view data in different ways.

For the PACS vendor, the Sun StorageTek 5800 is a great partner for delivering a total solution for next-generation data migration, retention and protection against media obsolescence that has historically proved to be problematic. PACS vendors who are very good at image acquisition and display need cutting-edge partner solutions in the area of data archive. By leveraging the Sun StorageTek 5800, PACS vendors are able to provide a low-cost parallel architecture for long-term data storage and data management that the Healthcare Enterprise can depend on to be self-healing in the event of failure, searchable and scaleable. Creating such a total solution will become more important in the future with the development of health information networks, requiring the ability to access information from multiple locations and their greater need for high availability, etc.
Healthcare Enterprise Storage, Archival and Retrieval
Sun StorageTek 5800 helps solve the conundrum of unstructured data storage, the explosion in data archiving and retrieval requirements, the need to simplify management and especially the need for dependability for Healthcare Enterprises and PACS vendors. Systems are available through industry leading medical imaging and information technology providers.

Operating Systems Versus Medical Image Applications

Image for a US Philips Envisor, System Operating Windows XP, being recovered with the help of distribution Backtrack Linux specializes in network security.

Most modalities have architecture of a operating systems based on Windows.

In many cases we see that operating systems for embedded hardware itself, illustrating these cases we have the Windows XP Embedded in some US's VIVID line of GE.

As we all know the Windows platform is known worldwide for its classic errors where the only solution to this problem is the formatting of the entire operating system.

Siemens Mangetom Concerto RM with Windows XP

When working with medical images, we have concerned not to lose the clinical data of patients, in such cases of a lost data the junction with PACS systems guarantee the integrity of data, but in many cases is not possible for lack of PACS systems and backup.

The most part of modalities have a operating systems and a application manager of aquisition of medical images. The operating system that in many cases is hidden to the operator only and is base for a application main in modality.

Some manufacturers have seen the need to have a more consistent operating system for your applications. This is seen in some ways advanced in technology like Magnetic Resonance GE, GE Tomography 64 channels where the same operating platform is Linux Red Hat.

Envisor Philips with Linux Backtrack 2

The choice to Linux plataform is not only to integrity, security and stability, but more by the high level of image processing and consumption of processing.

Particularly I think the Linux plataform adds more features, processing power and stability to image medical systems. Native services such: file transfer protocol, Secure Shell and others allow several ways of interaction and control not to mention the small number of failures and errors in system.

I.W friends around the world

Thanks for access around the world especially in the community related to biomedical informatics and healthcare. Specialy to people from India that are very interested from healthcare themes and medical tecnology. Powered by Google Analytics.

DViewer

A new way to diagnosis, DViewer, part of Dayko, Dayko Healthcare Medical Solutions. Solution developed by me . Simplicity, ease and speed. Writing entirely in Java, allows the analysis of clinical images from a browser anywhere in theworld by the Internet. More informations: dimaxjr@gmail.com

Computed Tomography 64 Light Speed Series

Inside a Light Speed VCT. High technology in acquisition of images.