Large UK healthcare group mobilizes against osteoporosis with Sectra OneScreen

Spire Roding Hospital, part of the private healthcare group Spire, now offers the opportunity of a health control with osteoporosis detection. The assessment of bone health is made possible by Sectra’s patented online service, Sectra OneScreen.

Spire Roding will be the first hospital in the Spire group to use Sectra's online service which indentifies at an early stage people at risk of getting osteoporotic fractures.

Spire Healthcare has a special focus on preventive care since its acquisition of Lifescan in 2011. Lifescan is one of the UK’s leading independent providers of CT health checks. Their aim is to identify the early signs of heart disease, colon cancer, and lung cancer; three of the four main causes of death in the UK. Now with Sectra OneScreen, they can include checking for osteoporosis.

“Osteoporosis can be an under-diagnosed disease and there is great need for simple, cost-effective methods of identifying patients in need of treatment,” says Dr John Giles, Clinical Director of Lifescan Ltd. “Being able to offer this additional service at Spire Roding Hospital is a great start and we would like to ultimately expand availability to more hospitals offering the Lifescan range of health checks.”

Osteoporosis is one of the most painful and costly diseases in the world. It primarily affects women, particularly after the menopause where every third woman is at risk of having a fragility fracture due to osteoporosis, which can cause great pain. Unfortunately several medicines for other conditions may have the side effect of bone loss and osteoporosis and cost- effective monitoring of these patients is another reason to use the Sectra service.

“We will increase our focus on osteoporosis health assessments with the availability of Sectra OneScreen on all digital modalities. This service fits very well with our ambition to deliver superior preventive care with Lifescan,” says Phillip Jones, Paramedical Services Manager at Spire Roding Hospital.

With Sectra’s service, patients at high risk of fracture can be identified and preventive care can be initiated. Additionally, Sectra’s service helps clinics identify women who should have their bone health (Bone Mineral Density, BMD) further investigated using a DXA scanner.

About Sectra OneScreen

Osteoporosis is a very under-diagnosed disease and a simple method for identifying patients requiring treatment is needed. The Sectra OneScreen online service is a cost-efficient solution for identifying patients at risk of osteoporosis. The service is well suited to the mammography workflow. After the four breast images included in the mammography examination, an image of the hand is acquired using the same radiology equipment. Since the woman is already standing by the modality, this adds no more than 30 seconds to the examination time. With the standard X-ray image of the hand, the women’s bone health (Bone Mineral Density, BMD) is analyzed using Sectra’s online service.

Clinics in Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, France, and the UK have introduced Sectra OneScreen into their mammography service.

Benefits women, mammography clinics and society

The benefits of using Sectra’s online service to identify patients at risk of osteoporosis include:

• Allowing women to assess and take control of their bone health, thereby avoiding fractures and unnecessary suffering.
• Identification of women at high risk of fractures, meaning that treatment or further investigation using DXA scanning can be initiated.
• The woman only needs to visit once for two examinations.
• Seamless integration into the regular mammography workflow. Possibility of combining two examinations into one visit, adding only 30 seconds per woman.
• No radiologist time needed. The procedure is based on FDA and CE-approved automatic image analysis done “in the cloud” while preserving patient integrity.
• No need for new hardware – no major initial investment. Can be used with all major digital mammography devices.
• Improvement of the bottom line for clinics and hospitals by doing more on the same visit. Also generates new and more patients for existing DXA systems.
• Reduction in healthcare costs for insurance companies and society.
• Primary osteoporosis affects primarily women in post-menopausal age. Secondary Osteoporosis affects also people with certain diseases such as Rheumatoid Arthritis but is also a known side effect from for example prostate as well as breast cancer treatment.

About osteoporosis

• Some 200 million people are estimated to suffer from osteoporosis.
• The disease is caused by an imbalance in the remodeling of the skeleton, which in turn can be caused, for example, by an unhealthy lifestyle, genetic factors or drugs used to treat other diseases.
• Nine million osteoporosis-related fractures, primarily radio carpal, hip and vertebra fractures occur annually.
• Affects one in three women, and one in five men, over the age of 50.
• One of the diseases that causes the highest economic burden for healthcare.

Source: International Osteoporosis Foundation http://www.iofbonehealth.org/

For further information, please contact: 
Dr. Torbjörn Kronander, CEO and President, Sectra  AB, 46 (0) 705 23 52 27 
Simo, Executive Vice President, Sectra AB, 46 (0 703 51 53 03 
Pictures: http://flickr.com/photos/sectramedicalsystems 
Press room: www.sectra.com/medical/press

About Sectra
Sectra develops and sells IT systems and services for radiology, women’s health, orthopaedics and rheumatology. More than 1,400 hospitals, clinics and imaging centers worldwide use the systems daily, together performing over 70 million radiology examinations annually. This makes Sectra one of the world-leading companies within systems for handling digital radiology images. In Scandinavia, Sectra is the market leader with more than 50% of all film-free installations. Sectra’s systems have been installed in North America, Scandinavia and most major countries in Europe and the Far East.

Sectra was founded in 1978 and has its roots in Linköping University in Sweden. The company’s business operation includes cutting-edge products and services within the niche segments of medical systems and secure communication systems. Sectra has offices in 12 countries and operates through partners worldwide. Sales in the 2012/2013 fiscal year totaled SEK 817 million. The Sectra share is quoted on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm AB exchange. For more information, visit www.sectra.com