Diagnostic imaging and Healthcare IT solutions provider Agfa healthcare has signed an agreement with the Sao Paolo, Brazil-based Fundao Instituto de Pesquisa e Estudo de Diagnstico por Imagen (FIDI) for the delivery and installation of its solutions across the facility's 25 sites.

Health IT and software provider CoActiv Medical has signed a distribution agreement with medical equipment sales and service provider XRI for the marketing of its digital image management technologies.

Tribridge, an IT services and business consulting firm, has purchased the privately held Mercatus Group, a managed healthcare services provider.

NovaRad has inked an installation contract with Southern California Diagnostic Imaging, providing the clinic with its NovaPACS and NovaRIS.

Traditional operating rooms with imaging systems, high-tech displays and other systems being wheeled in and out is a thing of the past. The recent move towards streamlining ORs has made physicians, architects and device manufacturers rethink the conventional OR and find innovative ways to integrate equipment-especially imaging hardware—into their ORs at the point of care.

Cloud computing technology—a market that Merrill Lynch values at $95 billion over the next five years—has recently begun to move  into healthcare. However, questions remain about how facilities and departments, including radiology, will fully take advantage of these zero footprint solutions.

As the economy has soured and facilities investigate new ways to cut costs, many have turned to outsourcing their radiology needs via remote reading services. Able to provide expert remote reads and reports, teleradiology can cut the costs linked to staffing in-house radiologists during overnight, weekend or off-hours when patient volume is often slim. Yet, cost efficiency should never trump quality of patient care, and newer services do not require that trade-off.

Implementing a RIS/PACS presents an imaging center with major changes to operations, workflow and practice. Physicians and administrators can realize enormous benefits from the introduction of the technology, provided the A, B, Cs of their master plan includes a D for proper deployment.