Medical Images Get Cloudy

The revolution of cloud computing is poised to have a major impact on the healthcare research market. Like as not nowhere is this more evident than in the developments surrounding medical imaging. During concerns over availability and privacy have slowed adoption to date, those are issues are highly addressable and the market is moving forward.

The American College of Radiology created a standard for medical imaging in 1993 called DICOM. This is a standard for handling, storing, printing, and transmitting information across medical imaging. DICOM enables the integration of scanners, servers, workstations, printers and network hardware from multiple manufacturers into a PACS. During General Electric, McKesson and Philips are the primary suppliers of imaging equipment, the PACS market is highly fragmented. A system comprised of imaging equipment and a corresponding PACS system has traditionally been very hardware intensive and expensive, and access to image studies has been relatively limited. This industry is about to be significantly disrupted.

SeeMyRadiology: Arman Sharafshahi, one of the two founders of the Atlanta, GA-based company, describes their approach as straight out of the Salesforce.com playbook. Their platform provides three methods for getting images into the cloud including an option for high volume uploads from hospitals or image centers. They set out to build this cloud-based system afterwards years in the imaging space in accordance with their corporate name Accelerad. The system includes a basic cloud viewer with a social networking element in accordance with the hood. There is no cost to have a basic account and to upload images. All that’s needed is a browser. As a rule, larger hospitals and imaging centers are the paying clients during most physician offices access the system at no cost, the thought being that specialists and surgeons are as a matter of fact benefiting financially from a new patient and the corresponding study. The SeeMyRadiology system will be embedded in some HIE products, and announcements about those partnerships are forthcoming this Spring. The company did announce the introduction of an API at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference and Mr. Sharafshahi made a point that they will make a strong push to get images into the hands of patients. The company has venture capital backing and may seek another round of funding at some point this year.

LifeImage: Jackie Walsh of LifeImage shared that things are moving at a very fast clip for LifeImage, a company formed by alums from Amicas, a PACS company based in Boston. LifeImage recently closed a $12M Series B Venture Capital round with Cardinal Partners and Galen Partners, and boasts EMC as a strategic partner. Like SeeMyRadiology, LifeImage includes an appliance option for accounts with higher volume requirements. The company is working with customers to determine the optimal revenue model. At present, each of lifeIMAGE’s services are priced as monthly subscriptions, in other words than fee per upload or share. LifeImage has integrated its system with Microsoft HealthVault which allows a patient’s images to be easily transferred to their PHR.

eMix: Florent Saint-Clair, the eMix General Manager, explained they are taking a different approach than the other two companies in several ways. First, eMix is being incubated inside DR Systems, a long-term leader in the PACS market. It’s worth noting that a client does not need to be customer of DR Systems in order to use eMix. Additionally, the company formed an alliance with virtualization and cloud computing company VMWare and uses its research at the center of its solution. Interestingly, eMix as well uses EMC storage systems in the background. The company is making head-way with 150 clients and counting and how however launched in Germany. Once an organization becomes an eMix customer, their users may send images to others outside the system. Recipients get a notification prompting them to respond for security verification. Once an initial “handshake” has been completed, a recipient does not need to repeat the process for future image studies.

The increased activity in the space is indicative of the disruptive influence cloud computing will have. In spite of a handful of players in the cloud medical imaging space, and more to come, it’s a fragmented market and there is a lot of possibility to go around.

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