ETIAM Reaches 80 Million Image Mark
Secure Medical Networking Technology Facilitates Landmark Number of Image Exchanges
ETIAM, the medical image connectivity company, this month reached an important milestone with 80 million images exchanged worldwide using its Secure Medical Networking technology. The ETIAM network enables exchange of 40,000 studies per year between institutions and transmission of 100,000 studies each year to radiologists working at home.
“Our 80 million figure represents only images actually communicated to recipient sites and not those simply sent to cloud storage,” notes Antoine Samson, Director of Operations at ETIAM. “ETIAM ultra-secure image storage architecture bypasses the cloud with no need for external image storage.”
The company has recently achieved additional notable statistics, including 1.5 million CDs imported to PACS using the ETIAM technology during the past five years or an average of about 450,000 CDs annually. It also now counts more than 100 hospitals worldwide using its advanced technology to share images, documents, reports and related healthcare data. ETIAM solutions are deployed in more than 2,000 healthcare enterprises worldwide including such prestigious institutions as Johns Hopkins, Cleveland Clinic, Duke, Mayo Clinic, UCSF and Yale.
“These numbers reflect the growing recognition of how important the ability to share images and other information rapidly and efficiently across healthcare boundaries has become in the modern healthcare age,” says Bernard Hervault, Vice President of Teleimaging for ETIAM. “When seconds count in an emergency medical procedure, all the benefits of today’s advanced medical expertise and technologies depend on how fast diagnostic information reaches the point of care. Additionally, remote consults, second opinions and collaboration on cases are playing increasingly important roles in healthcare and images must be sent efficiently and securely to facilitate this.”
ETIAM‘s Secure Medical Networking technology, which accomplishes this, encompasses a range of products. The newest offering, ETIAM-Connect, is the fastest solution for electronically sharing medical images and associated clinical data among institutions securely over the internet. It is based on ETIAM’s Secure Medical Networking technology which has been deployed for three years in various configurations. To use the system, images are uploaded to a Web Gateway and transmitted over a secure point-to-point connection, bypassing the ordinary cloud. Within the hospital, images are automatically routed right to the point of care.
ETIAM-Connect automatically identifies exam type, directs information to the appropriate department, enables viewing of any image format and reconciles patient data with in-house identifiers.
ETIAM also offers a range of related products designed to manage studies from beyond the enterprise as well as to communicate internal information to other facilities.
According to Georges Le Goualher, Vice President of Marketing for ETIAM, one of the major uses for ETIAM-Connect is emergency department transfers, and transfers of stroke patients in particular. “Using ETIAM-Connect, images arrive at the operating room (OR) well in advance of the patients so that preparations can begin well before the transfer occurs,” he says. “Alternatively, images would be sent on CD along with the patient, delaying an emergency procedure.”
Sharing expertise across the enterprise through tele-consultations is another major benefit of the system. ETIAM technology is frequently relied upon for consultations on oncology and stroke cases, as well as electro-encephalography with associated video of premature infants and care of the elderly. It also is used for second opinions, following the results of therapy delivered at another institution.
Exemplifying the use of ETIAM technology is a new national healthcare project underway in France, the Infant Santé or Children’s Good Health program. For this program, ETIAM will create a national DICOM internet network allowing imaging data to be transmitted among imaging departments of the centers involved in pediatric cancer management.
“Children’s cancers are relatively rare diseases and therefore frequently require expert opinions at regional, national and even sometimes international levels,” explains Eric Le Bihan, President of ETIAM Group. “The sharing of medical images has become mandatory to provide specialized expertise and the highest level of care. ETIAM provides the secured networks that are needed to accomplish this efficiently, affordably and safely.”
About ETIAM
ETIAM, the medical image connectivity company, provides secure medical networking solutions to hospitals and healthcare professionals with end-to-end, easy-to-use, feature-rich software and services, through a unique software technology and platform. With more than 2,000 customers in Europe and North America, ETIAM solutions allow physicians to securely and reliably exchange medical images while benefiting from 24/7 support. ETIAM solutions seamlessly integrate documents, film, video, visible light and other images, transports and distributes them to any PACS and electronic health record (EHR) systems.
SOURCE: ETIAM