Healthcare IT Alliance to Provide Medical Image Access, Exchange, and Management

GNAX Health (Dallas, TX, USA), Acuo Technologies (Minneapolis, MN, USA), and Client Outlook (Allen, TX, USA) reported on the formation of a new strategic alliance to provide an integrated and simplified system for medical image access, exchange, and management.

The cloud-based, clinical content management solution delivered through this alliance offers healthcare providers a cost-effective way to implement a best-of-breed solution that includes a vendor-neutral archive (VNA) platform, an integrated universal medical image viewer, and image exchange strategies that fit the needs of healthcare organizations.

The solution, available through a single contract, combines Acuo’s universal clinical platform (UCP) with Client Outlook’s eUnity clinical image visualization, sharing, and collaboration toolset, hosted within GNAX’s healthcare-focused cloud infrastructure and tier-4 data centers--all supported by a interconnected customer support program. This collective offering provides necessary components critical to building a highly secure disaster recovery and business continuity solution for medical imaging without the infrastructure and costs associated with a traditional model. This solution also provides a cost-effective way to store and protect data by freeing up primary local storage, reducing the total amount of storage needed, and changing from a capital-intensive local archive to a pay-as-you-go operational service.

GNAX Health is also in the final stages of developing a web-based image exchange service, called SDEX (secure DICOM exchange). Integrated into the foundation of Acuo’s UCP and data structure as well with the Client Outlook viewer, SDEX provides customers with the advantages of a single, best-of-breed exchange solution. It meets the challenge of complicated workflows by integrating with the provider‘s employee and patient identification systems to secure access and simplify patient searches. Studies are retrieved from any of the connected picture archive and communication system (PACS), local edge devices or from the cloud archive, making the location of the image transparent to the end user. Providers are able to securely exchange and view images with other GNAX VNA and non-GNAX customers seamlessly, creating a health information exchange (HIE) platform with a workflow for medical imaging.

Acuo’s UCP simplifies the process of managing clinical content, providing virtualization and normalization of medical images and non-DICOM (digital imaging and communications in medicine) data, service orchestration, data replication, clinical workflow, compliance and contextual data management services, with a built-in performance management environment and dashboard.

Client Outlook’s eUnity product provides a universal viewer that allows healthcare professionals access, manipulate, and collaborate in real-time with diagnostic quality medical images utilizing a web-browser and a mobile application for tablets that enables “on-the-go” viewing of all image modalities, including X-ray, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), color ultrasound, and X-ray angiography.

“The integration of these solutions solves a wide range of problems for our healthcare customers,” said Jeff Hinkle, chief executive officer for GNAX Health. “This offering tightly integrates world-class clinical content viewing, abstraction and life cycle management applications, data migration, cloud-computing, and customer support services into a single bundle, greatly simplifying the process of administering enterprise medical image access, exchange, and management while reducing IT [information technology] costs.”

All healthcare systems, including hospital networks, university hospitals, community hospitals, physician offices, and other organizations with complicated use-case requirements should benefit greatly from the interoperability and economies of scale offered by this alliance. The ability to accelerate access to patient information at the point of care along with the collaborative benefits of having an integrated viewing platform improves clinical decision-making, enhances quality of care, and speeds up treatment for patients.

Related Links:
GNAX Health
Acuo Technologies
Client Outlook