Contracts for Bycast, NovaRad, Varian

Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) is expanding its Bycast StorageGRID deployment to provide a regional cardiac image library.Vancouver Coastal Health is responsible for the delivery of $2 billion in community, hospital and residential care services to over 1 million people. VCH will extend their existing cardiac StorageGRID to serve three facilities: Lions Gate Hospital, St. Paul’s Hospital and Vancouver General Hospital. The StorageGRID powered library will protect data and ensure high availability of the images for cardiologists.


Six hospitals in the southern region are the latest to select NovaRad's NovaPACS for their imaging and reading needs. The hospitals include:
  • 42-bed Lakeland Community Hospital in Haleyville, Ala.
  • 34-bed Wedowee Hospital in Wedowee, Ala.
  • 152-bed Crittenden Memorial Hospital in West Memphis, Ark.
  • 94-bed Dodge County Hospital in Eastman, Ga.
  • 25-bed Tattnall Community Hospital in Reidsville, Ga.
  • 47-bed King's Daughters Hospital in Yazoo, Miss.

The new Queen's Hospital in Romford, located in northeast London, has commenced advanced radiotherapy treatments for cancer patients using new equipment and software from Varian Medical Systems. Four Varian Clinac iX linear accelerators have been installed at the new facility. The first two of these machines began clinical treatments in December and the others are due to start treating cancer patients in January.


Varian Medical Systems has been ranked first in the industry in overall service performance by the ServiceTrak 2006 survey report on radiation oncology accelerators published by research company IMV. Varian ranked first in the majority of service attributes covered by this year's survey. In addition, the company's scores exceeded the industry averages for 31 of the 34 parameters measured. The service categories included:
  • Overall service performance;
  • Overall satisfaction with the manufacturer;
  • Effectiveness in resolving problems;
  • Probability of purchasing again from this manufacturer;
  • Availability of replacement parts;
  • System installation process; and
  • Training
The company also scored above all competitors on these system performance parameters:
  • System performance meets expectations;
  • Reliability of hardware;
  • Reliability of software;
  • System integration for therapy planning; and
  • System ease of use

Around the web

The nuclear imaging isotope shortage of molybdenum-99 may be over now that the sidelined reactor is restarting. ASNC's president says PET and new SPECT technologies helped cardiac imaging labs better weather the storm.

CMS has more than doubled the CCTA payment rate from $175 to $357.13. The move, expected to have a significant impact on the utilization of cardiac CT, received immediate praise from imaging specialists.

The newly cleared offering, AutoChamber, was designed with opportunistic screening in mind. It can evaluate many different kinds of CT images, including those originally gathered to screen patients for lung cancer. 

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