The latest contracts and installation news...

Philips and the UAB Health System are partnering towards the hospital’s new Heart and Vascular Center. The new center will feature Philips Medical technologies. The new UAB Heart and Vascular Center will be equipped with 13 Philips labs, including four adult catheterization labs, three electrophysiology labs, four vascular and interventional radiology labs, one interventional neuroradiology lab, and one pediatric lab.

In addition, UAB has installed in its hospital and The Kirklin Clinic a number of diagnostic systems, including the Philips Brilliance 64-slice and 40-slice CT systems in the UAB Hospital radiology department, two Philips 40-slice CT systems in the emergency department, a Philips Achieva 3.0 Tesla Cardiovascular MRI System, outpatient bi-plane catheterization equipment, and an Achieva 1.5 Telsa magnetic resonance imaging system in The Kirklin Clinic.

Siemens Medical Solutions announces that four healthcare facilities across the U.S. have signed with Siemens to implement NextGen Healthcare's electronic medical record (NextGen EMR) and/or enterprise practice management (NextGen EPM) system, key components of Siemens' healthcare information technology (IT) portfolio.

Alegent Health in Omaha, Neb., a system of eight acute-care hospitals, a primary-care physician network of more than 40 clinical sites supporting over 100 employed physician associates, and an 800-physician member Physician Hospital Organization, signed for 180 NextGen EMR licenses in support of its ambulatory connectivity initiatives.

Other facilities to install the systems include Greenwood Leflore Hospital (Greenwood, Miss.), Meridian Health (Neptune, N.J.), and Saint Joseph's Hospital (Yonkers, N.Y.).

Two freestanding imaging centers recently selected NovaPACS by NovaRad Corp., increasing NovaRad's installations in Texas to 13. The newly signed centers are San Antonio Molecular Imaging in San Antonio and Metrostat Diagnostic Services in Garland.

Breast cancer patients at Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust in England are among the first in the country to participate in a study to test image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT), which enables clinicians to better image the cancer site at the time of treatment. Clinicians at the hospital are using a new On-Board Imager device from Varian Medical Systems to better image the post-lumpectomy breast for radiotherapy.

TeraMedica and ThedaCare recently announced that the installation of the Evercore- Clinical Information Manager is now in production mode and fully operational. Under the terms of the agreement, dated March 2006, TeraMedica’s Evercore - Clinical Information Manager was intended to integrate all of ThedaCare’s clinical objects, then distribute them in a lightweight format within the Epic Systems Electronic Medical Record, making them available to attending health care professionals via web accessible devices.

Acceletronics Inc. has announced that it has sold six TheraView Electronic Portal Imaging Devices (EPID) to free-standing cancer treatment centers in California, Oregon and Washington.

The Royal Hospital Chelsea (RHC) in London, England, recently acquired and deployed a complete data archiving and backup system built around BridgeHead Software’s HT integrated storage management (ISM) platform.

CareTech Solutions, an information technology (IT) and health information management (HIM) services provider for hospitals and health systems, today announced it has signed a five-year transcription contract with Oakwood Healthcare System in southeastern Michigan. CareTech will assume day-to-day management of its transcription staff of 40 professionals who become CareTech employees under the arrangement.

Emageon Inc. announced Monday that it has extended and expanded its digital healthcare information management agreement with the Sisters of Mercy Health System, a leading regional health system based in St. Louis, Mo. A system-wide digital image management and visualization system will be implemented enterprise-wide. Emageon will provide software that distributes these advanced diagnostic tools across the entire healthcare system, giving physicians the ability to more effectively communicate, diagnose and treat patient conditions.

In other Emageon news, the company announced today that it has entered into a digital healthcare information management agreement with MidMichigan Health, a major regional health system in Central Michigan. The five-year agreement calls for the implementation of Emageon’s Enterprise Visual Medical System (EVMS) across the entire MidMichigan hospital system, including MidMichigan Medical Center-Midland, MidMichigan Medical Center-Gladwin, MidMichigan Medical Center-Clare and Gratiot Medical Center.

Intelerad Medical Systems has signed an additional 35 sites across Ontario, Canada, over the last quarter, the company said. The sale of these sites comes as a result of the Ontario Ministry of Health’s funding earmarked for diagnostic imaging within clinics that was announced in January of this year, the company said. 
The sales were made through a joint-effort with Ontario-based partner iRad Technical Services Inc.

Enterprise e-health system provider MEDSEEK has announced the launch of two client websites. Bethesda Memorial Hospital, a 390-bed, not-for-profit hospital in Boynton Beach, Fla., and Virginia Mason Medical Center, a 336-bed acute-care hospital in Seattle, Wash., selected MEDSEEK’S comprehensive systems to connect patients and their families online.

Milwaukee-based Neurognostics Inc. specializing in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has successfully completed the installation of two of its MindState fDAD systems. The two installs represent the first clinical installation of the company’s fMRI data-acquisition device. One of the sites that is now using the system is Center for Diagnostic Imaging (CDI) in Milwaukee.