Ambra Health and Google Cloud Collaborate to Advance Healthcare Research with Anonymized Medical Imaging Data

NEW YORK and CHICAGO, IL (RSNA) — November 26, 2018 — Ambra Health, makers of the leading cloud-based, medical image management suite, today announced a new collaboration with Google Cloud to advance healthcare research with anonymized medical imaging data. Leveraging Google Cloud’s Healthcare API, the Ambra Health Cloud PACS solution for Google Cloud allows researchers to turn data into insights by easily de-identifying patient medical imaging data for use in research studies. Leading academic medical centers are among the first research institutions to use the solution to enable machine learning research to improve patient care.

In order for researchers to use MR, CT, or PET scans for machine learning experiments, researchers typically must remove Protected Health Information (PHI) from medical imaging data, including patient name and date of birth in Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) tags. Together with the new Google Cloud Healthcare API, Ambra Health helps solve this challenge for its healthcare research customers.

Last year, Ambra Health began offering its suite of medical image management software through Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The Ambra Cloud Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) is a fully managed platform that leverages the scalable, reliable, and highly secure cloud infrastructure of GCP. Most recently, Ambra Health became an early adopter of the Cloud Healthcare API, which connects healthcare data to advanced Google Cloud capabilities.

A major academic medical center is among the first institutions to leverage the shared capability. The center sought a secure method to view medical imaging data and collaborate with fellow researchers during the development of machine learning tools to improve patient care. Working with the new Google Cloud Healthcare API and Ambra Health Cloud PACS solution for Google Cloud, the center enabled an open source data set for global collaboration.

“The future of healthcare depends on the ability to more securely store, curate, view, and share research data,” says Morris Panner, CEO of Ambra Health. “The collaboration with Google Cloud offers opportunities for providers to work together more effectively and furthers deep learning capabilities for medical imaging.”

Ambra’s secure and scalable Cloud PACS makes it simple to move all research data into one single repository for easy access and viewing. Images can be viewed anytime, anywhere through the Ambra zero-footprint, web-based HTML5 DICOM viewer, which is FDA 510(k) cleared per FDA regulations and can be used through any web browser.

Ambra Health has been working closely with Google Cloud to use the new Healthcare API. “Google Cloud has teams of incredibly smart people building out APIs and tools that add value to medical imaging data,” says Andrew Duckworth, VP of Business Development for Ambra Health. “Together, we are helping healthcare organizations do much more with their data that will ultimately help patients receive better healthcare.”

Ambra Health customers that opt to use the Cloud PACS running on GCP leverage Compute Engine as the virtual machine infrastructure; Cloud Storage for unified object storage; and the Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API for managing and redacting sensitive patient data at scale. Read the full case study here.

The fact that GCP is committed to HIPAA and GDPR compliance and includes robust security and encryption mechanisms saves Ambra Health time onboarding new deployments. “It would take months or even years for our small regulatory and compliance team to check all the U.S. and international security and privacy boxes,” Andrew notes. “With GCP, it’s a matter of minutes.”

This is just one example of the ways Ambra Health and Google Cloud are collaborating. To learn more, visit the Ambra Health or Google Cloud booth (booths #1122 and North Hall #7161 respectively) at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting in Chicago from November 25-30. To make an appointment or for more detail, visit the Ambra Health Website.

About Ambra Health

Ambra Health is a medical data and image management SaaS company. Intuitive, flexible, scalable and highly interoperable, the Ambra cloud platform is designed to serve as the backbone of imaging innovation and progress for healthcare providers. It empowers some of the largest health systems such as Memorial Hermann and New England Baptist Hospital as well as radiology practices, subspecialty practices and clinical research organizations to dramatically improve imaging and collaborative care workflows. As expert partners, we listen to our customers, understand their needs, and apply our extensive knowledge to deliver innovative medical image management solutions for the future of healthcare, now. Discover what the Ambra medical imaging cloud can do for you at www.ambrahealth.com.