A Medical Device Daily
Hitachi Data Systems (Santa Clara, California), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi (Tokyo), has been selected by Fujifilm Medical Systems USA, (Stamford, Connecticut) a provider of diagnostic imaging products and network systems for radiology, to provide advanced storage solutions for Fujifilm's Synapse picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) customers.
"There are a number of factors contributing to the need for a continual evolution in storage requirements — more complex exams like multi-slice Computed Tomography [CT] scans, the increasing adoption of digital mammography systems, and now the growing integration of cardiology exams as a result of Fujifilm's recent acquisition of ProSolv CardioVascular [Indianapolis]," said Jim Morgan, Fujifilm's national marketing manager for network systems. "With a reputation for delivering a stream of innovative products to meet any daunting data storage requirements, Hitachi Data Systems is an ideal partner for Fujifilm and will enable us to ensure that critical patient data is secure yet accessible."
Hitachi Data Systems' advanced storage solutions are designed to enable clinical users to store, retrieve, distribute and present clinical images and related data quickly, reliably, and in a secure and efficient manner, according to the company.
Hitachi Data Systems develops storage solutions with the performance, availability and scalability to maximize customers' ROI and minimize their risk, according to the company. Hitachi is a global electronics company with roughly 356,000 employees worldwide.
In other grants, three universities are creating a new digital grid designed to allow cardiovascular researchers worldwide to exchange heart-related illness data with an $8.5 million federal grant.
The Cardiovascular Research Grid unveiled this week is expected to be used to find new ways to prevent, detect and treat life-threatening heart illnesses.
The grid will be based at the Institute for Computational Medicine at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland) in collaboration with Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio) and the University of California, San Diego.
The project teams will develop grid-based software tools to enable other research groups to become nodes on the grid, according to Johns Hopkins. After connecting to the grid, researchers will be able to access and share data, data analysis tools and models related to healthy patients and those with heart disease. None of the heart data will contain patient identifying information.
The National Institutes of Health beginning this month is providing the four-year grant.