July 27, 2009 – Carestream Health Inc. today launched a new Web-based cardiology PACS that offers a single integrated platform for diagnosis, image review and reporting for echocardiography, cardiac catheterization and nuclear cardiology procedures as well as electrocardiogram management.
The Carestream Cardiology PACS will be available by the end of September. The system allows providers to consolidate isolated cardiac lab systems into a centralized solution to achieve both greater efficiency and lower costs. The cardiology PACS client also enables productive reading of cardiology data from any on-site or off-site networked PC. The company said clinicians will benefit from convenient and productive review of multiple cardiac studies and results, along with easy access to prior exams.
Carestream Health’s new cardiology PACS integrates seamlessly with the company’s radiology PACS, allowing healthcare providers to use the same workstation for diagnostic reading and clinical review of cardiology and radiology studies.
Most cardiology services providers are hampered by the need for physicians to log onto multiple systems to review patient images and data. Accessing prior exams from DVD or tape libraries can also be time-consuming and inefficient, Carestream said. The new cardiology PACS provides rapid access to images, data and reports for clinicians at any location, helping improve the workflow.
The new cardiology PACS offers structured reporting templates for all cardiovascular applications (cath, echo, vascular and nuclear) with point-and-click access to predefined statements along with digital signatures. Formatting is user-customizable and reports can be distributed using HL7, e-mail, automatic print or fax transmissions. The company said it has comprehensive measurement tools for echocardiography applications, including the ability to import measurements taken at the modality. The platform also delivers specialized echocardiography features, including automatic quad screen display for stress echo exams, automatic DICOM calibration and the ability to view imported exams and documents from third-party systems. An ECG management solution includes a time-saving worklist and the ability to integrate to multivendor ECG carts. The catheterization reporting tools such as coronary tree annotations for stenosis, stent and graft locations to eliminate dictation and provide a single tool for reporting of echo, cardiac cath and nuclear cardiology. Nuclear cardiology features, including Web-based gated SPECT wall motion review, a 3D cine and localizer tool, as well as viewing and reporting tools.
If Carestream Health’s cardiology PACS is integrated with the company’s radiology PACS, clinicians on any PC or workstation gain access to native 3D functionality for cardiac analysis, coronary analysis, calcium scoring and other specialized cardiac applications. Carestream Health also offers a flexible information management platform that can manage DICOM and non-DICOM information captured by cardiology, radiology and a variety of other patient imaging and information systems. With this platform, hospitals and cardiology practices can consolidate data management throughout the enterprise to reduce the high costs associated with separate archiving systems.