A Medical Device Daily

Concord Communications (Marlboro, Massachusetts) said that the University of Rochester Medical Center (Rochester, New York) has deployed its eHealth Suite in conjunction with its Spectrum Integrity software platform to provide a comprehensive historical and real-time view into the medical center’s wired and wireless infrastructure.

The eHealth Suite provides detailed historical data for information technology (IT) capacity forecasting, while the Spectrum software provides a real-time view into network-wide availability and performance.

“Our IT infrastructure is literally the backbone of the medical center’s healthcare services,” Gary Kobel, manager of customer support for the University of Rochester Medical Center, said. “It supports a wide range of critical applications – everything from patient registration and online medical records, to PACS imaging and video telemedicine. As our core medical and research services become increasingly dependent on technology, we find that any application or device degradation or failure has an extremely large impact on our organization’s ability to operate effectively.”

Swissray International (Elizabeth, New Jersey) said that it has received orders for multiple direct digital radiography (ddR) systems from New England Baptist Hospital (Boston). The systems are scheduled to be installed starting next month.

Digital radiography provides medical radiographic images in seconds at a lower cost than conventional or computed radiography because, among other factors, film, imaging plates, cassettes and chemical processing are not required.

Swissray uses a multi-functional, single-detector design in providing a full range of ddR systems for orthopedic applications, imaging centers, hospitals and emergency departments. The company said its 16-bit detector technology delivers more than 65,000 grey levels for “unmatched diagnostic image quality.”

Daou Systems (Exton, Pennsylvania), a provider of IT consulting and management services to healthcare organizations, reported contracting with Salem Hospital (Salem, Oregon), to develop a comprehensive plan for integrating wireless technology with the organization’s overall IT systems strategy.

The contract represents the third significant mobile health project Daou has signed so far this year. The company is providing a similar strategic plan for wireless to Southern Regional Health System, located outside of Atlanta, in addition to a mobile health design and implementation for Adventist Health System (Lake Mary, Florida).

Daou will develop a master plan to carry Salem Hospital forward through the next three to five years, addressing a number of initiatives. First, the hospital is working to install a clinical information system, a system designed to support mobile computing. “Mobile computing – point-of-service computing where a wireless IT device replaces manual record-keeping at a patient’s bedside and anywhere else clinical care is delivered – is key to our overall mission in implementing the system, and that’s one of the reasons Daou’s assessment of our wireless needs is vitally important, being sure we have the infrastructure in place to support the system,” said Dennis Sato, the hospital’s chief information officer.

In addition, Salem plans to build a six-story medical tower slated for completion in 2008. “We’re already talking about how wireless will be used in the new building, and Daou’s plan will address that,” Sato said.

In other grants/contracts news:

• Focus Diagnostics (Herndon, Virginia), a provider of infectious disease testing services and diagnostic products, reported an agreement with Luminex (Austin, Texas) with licensing terms providing Focus Diagnostics access to Luminex’s xMAP bead-based multiplexing technology for use in infectious disease products.

Through the agreement, Focus has acquired non-exclusive worldwide rights to commercialize certain in vitro clinical diagnostic products using Luminex xMAP technology. The company provides infectious disease testing services and diagnostic products.

• NWG Technologies (Brighton, Michigan) said that Trinity Health (Novi, Michigan) and St. John Health (Detroit) have selected its SSL ClearView Reporter application as an enhancement to their Juniper Networks SSL VPN installations. SSL ClearView Reporter logs data from one or more SSL VPN devices and generates feature-rich reports that help healthcare security professionals streamline information security management processes.

• Fonar (Melville, New York) said that it has sold and installed an Upright MRI at StandUp MRI (Riverhead, New York). The facility is operated and managed by Diagnostic Imaging Management Co. (DIMC), which is affiliated with Long Island Diagnostic Imaging (LIDI; also Riverhead). LIDI has been offering full imaging modality services to the Long Island area for more than 30 years.