GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Nij Smellinghe Hospital in Drachten, The Netherlands, has chosen to extend its relationship with Carestream Health by signing a new multi-year contract for RIS/PACS eHealth Managed Services. The new contact will deliver an enterprise-wide solution with fast, secure image access by on-site and remote clinicians whilst removing the burden of infrastructure management and costs.

Nij Smellinghe Hospital is known for its use of advanced technologies and for delivering high quality health services to the region of South East Friesland with a population of 120,000 inhabitants. The hospital became filmless in 1999 following the installation of CARESTREAM PACS, becoming the first hospital within The Netherlands with enterprise-wide PACS facilities. The new agreement with Carestream Health extends that contract to include new RIS/PACS capability and the management of approximately 632,000 studies over the term of the contract.

“Our relationship with Carestream over the years has been very positive but when our previous contract ended we felt it was sensible to investigate what services the market was offering,” said Wim Loman, IT Manager at Nij Smellinghe Hospital. “After a thorough evaluation process, Carestream still offered the best solution, which now includes advanced reading tools such as native 3D, vessel tracking, cardiac and virtual colonoscopy. The new contract will allow us to concentrate on patient care while Carestream manages the PACS infrastructure on our behalf. Ultimately the cloud-based, fee-for-use service lowers our investment in equipment, technology and personnel resources.”

eHealth RIS/PACS Services is the latest addition to Carestream’s eHealth Managed Services portfolio and allows healthcare providers to connect to secure, remote data centres hosted and managed by Carestream Health. The Company currently operates from eight data centres in five countries throughout Europe and North America and overall the cloud has more than 1 billion store images worldwide, representing more than 500 terabytes of data.

From the cloud patient information can be shared with authorised clinicians over an Internet connection without the needs to build, maintain and upgrade a complex infrastructure. The service, which operates on a monthly fee based on the number of imaging exams produced each month, enables convenient remote reading for primary diagnosis as well as the ability to obtain a second opinion from another radiologist or specialist.

Contracting to the service also eliminates the danger of obsolescence since Carestream continuously maintains and upgrades its data centres and onsite technology. Patient data and exam information are synchronised so identical information is available to all users, regardless of location. The company’s eHealth Managed Services platform is founded on a vendor neutral infrastructure that is powered by Carestream innovative technologies to allow the sharing of information among disparate systems.

“Our new eHealth RIS/PACS Services deliver all the functionality of PACS, including image management, viewing, distribution and storage,” said Pierre-Yves Nectoux, eHealth Managed Services Business Development Manager, Carestream Health. “Most healthcare providers can achieve lower overall costs by purchasing this and simultaneously benefit from our leading edge management and security technologies.”