Agfa feeds live clinical studies to TCT

Agfa HealthCare is utilizing its CardioNow WebSend web-based technology for DICOM study sharing to connect sites broadcasting live international cases with conference attendees at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference this week in Washington, D.C.

Interventional studies from cardiovascular centers are being fed to the conference from 27 sites worldwide, including Germany, France, Israel, Brazil, Korea, China, New Zealand, India and the United States. Physicians will perform live cases which will be simultaneously broadcast to conference attendees.  

The Agfa feed began around 8:30 a.m. on Monday at TCT, after smoothing out a few network complications. As of Wednesday afternoon at TCT, the CardioNow WebSend had approximately 20 live cases capable of being downloaded, Agfa spokesman, Vincent Norad, told Cardiovascular Business News. All of those cases took place on either the Monday or Tuesday, according to Norad. The only complication is that some of the larger studies are taking a long time to download because of their size, and a faster network would be better, Norad said.

The CardioNow WebSend software transfers angiographic and IVUS studies to the Washington Convention Center, where they are reviewed in native DICOM format from CardioNow Diagnostic Workstations located in the center or through PCs with internet access. Attendees are reviewing, discussing and analyzing cases, according to Agfa.

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