VCU news

By William Carver and Paul Sumner

ATLANTA and HOUSTON – A Picture Archiving and Communications System currently in use by Virginia Commonwealth University's MCV Hospitals may be a diagnostic superhighway for medical professionals who practice in rural areas, who staff medical centers in more than one community or who need that often-sought second opinion about a patient's condition. For patients, it will mean fewer headaches from traveling between consulting physicians carrying medical records and images.

The IA2000 imaging storage and distribution system offered by Norcross, Georgia-based Imaging Archive International, LLC (IAI), operates on any of the industry-standard ProLiant servers from Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE:CPQ).

Using IA2000, physicians and radiologists in different locations can simultaneously view digital images of a patient and consult on the patient's condition and treatment within seconds of completing a radiological scan. This is accomplished without the risk of losing original images while being shipped or stored. Using readily available, off-the-shelf components means lower initial costs, more affordable system maintenance and uncompromising stability and performance.

"Using IA2000, specialized medical expertise is both available and affordable for small medical centers and rural hospitals," said Paul Sumner, CEO of IAI. "Scalable, open systems like Compaq ProLiant servers and StorageWorks allow doctors to do in seconds what used to take hours or days. The savings in both time and money is dramatic."

MCVH put the IA2000 digital imaging system to work between its central hub in downtown Richmond, the only Level I Trauma Center in Central Virginia, and an MCVH outpatient facility about 11 miles away. The IA2000 system was installed to improve operational efficiencies at the two facilities, while at the same time enhancing patient care.

The system is scalable to meet the needs of virtually any size medical center. MCVH officials say IA2000 has tremendous potential for leveraging medical expertise, which is sometimes scarce in rural areas.

"We think the medical imaging community - rural and urban alike - will welcome this technology eagerly," said Ronald Miller, director of radiology at MCVH. "The reliability of the IA2000 system has been exceptional. It simply hasn't gone down since it entered service, and that's even more important to us than its reasonable cost. This capability in our clinics means greater convenience for our patients and increased efficiency for our physicians and radiologists."

At MCVH, the IA2000 system manages some 250,000 patient imaging studies performed annually. The system deployed at MCVH operates using Compaq ProLiant servers, more than 60 Compaq workstations, and Compaq StorageWorks hardware RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) enclosures.

The IA2000 system stores and transmits images while meeting the medical information security standards mandated by Congress in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

"Compaq has led the drive for more innovative uses of open, industry-standard technologies," said Tom Baber, vice president, Southeast Region for Compaq. "This effort at the VCU's Medical College of Virginia Hospitals illustrates the value of integrating Compaq equipment with digital imaging solutions. When a sophisticated application like IA2000 can be delivered on off-the-shelf Compaq ProLiant servers and our StorageWorks products, we know we're fulfilling our mission in healthcare IT."

IA2000 allows physicians to view diagnostic images from any DICOM III-conforming equipment. DICOM III is the current technical standard for communication between digital medical imaging devices.