EU Funded-Project To Address Uneven Spread of Radiology Across Europe

A European Union- (EU)-funded initiative, called the R-Bay validation project, aims to address the uneven spread of radiologists across member states.

Carestream Health, Inc. (Rochester, NY, USA) is a major technical infrastructure provider to the project. Carestream Radiology and Information Management Solutions (IMS) are driving the initial test platform for the project by facilitating remote reporting of images from hospitals in Denmark, Finland, and Czech Republic by clinical providers in Estonia, Lithuania, and the Netherlands.

The R-Bay project is leading the way for the creation of a unique internal eMarketplace for eHealth services in Europe that will act as a cross border commodity brokering and exchange place. The eMarketplace will enable the sale and purchase of remote viewing, consulting, and second opinion services across organizations, regions, and nations, enabling pan-European distribution of radiologist resources across trusted and secure networks.

"Carestream Health has wide experience in system integration and the interoperability issues associated with implementing national and regional solutions, such as the Scotland National PACS project, Baltic eHealth project, and Uppsala region of Sweden,” said Ulf Andersson, marketing director, Europe North, Carestream Health. "Our radiology solutions create a highly productive desktop and workflow environment and our IMS solutions go beyond conventional storage functions to provide efficient, intelligent management of patient data. As part of the R-Bay project, these solutions will ultimately help to better distribute radiologist resources to offer all patients in Europe the opportunity to access optimal medical care through pan-European imaging services.”

To manage the project and meet the overall objectives, Carestream Heath will work closely with Finnish information technology (IT) provider Mawell (Helsinki, Finland), who is responsible for providing the central eConsultation workflow portal. A range of four services will be offered under the consultation portal--eInterpretation, eProcessing, eArchiving, and eTraining. To facilitate these services, Carestream's thin-client architecture is being scaled to create a virtual cross border community, all within the same software framework, for effective and secure sharing of patient clinical information.

R-Bay is utilizing the latest version of Kodak Carestream picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), which provides optional integrated applications such as image fusion and orthopedic surgical templating, in addition to native three-dimensional (3D) imaging and advanced cardiac features. The built-in dynamic streaming capabilities make advanced functionality readily available to authorized users by allowing clinicians to review the first images in an exam while the rest of the study is being transmitted. Furthermore, the licensing structure sets pricing for features and functionality based on the number of concurrent users. This provides increased flexibility since users can access desired tools on any remote workstation, while adding affordability since institutions pay for the number of concurrent users and not for the number of workstations where the features can be employed.

Carestream Health has licensed the Kodak (Rochester, NY, USA) brand for use with its own brands-such as Carestream, Directview, and Dryview-across its range of medical imaging and healthcare IT products.

Carestream Health, is a leading provider of dental and medical imaging systems and healthcare IT solutions; molecular imaging systems for the life science research and drug discovery/development market segments; and X-ray film and digital X-ray products for the non-destructive testing market.

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