IBM breaks new ground with open-standard medical imaging and
archiving solutions
8 December 2008
IBM has unveiled a powerful combination of advanced imaging and
information archiving technologies that provides healthcare and medical
research organisations with complete and timely access to critical
imaging and diagnostic information at the point of care — regardless of
the source, age or location of the information.
IBM's new Healthcare Image and Information Grid (HIIG) framework is
built on open standards and enables physicians to make better decisions
based on more complete information at the precise moment it is needed
for a patient's care.
The current enterprise imaging environment has escalated demand for a
scalable archive environment, robust imaging application architecture,
and the ability to access image studies base on a patient-centred view
of data. Further, imaging itself has moved far beyond the domain of
radiology, becoming pervasive across the entire healthcare industry.
Up until now, however, healthcare-delivery organizations have been
challenged to fully integrate emerging technologies with their diverse,
existing systems to improve patient care. IBM's HIIG framework answers
that challenge.
HIIG is a services-oriented solution built on open standards and
interoperable services that provide healthcare organizations with
integrated tools as well as a roadmap for the development of
enterprise-wide image enabled medical archives.
HIIG provides clients with the ability to achieve this goal in
today's heterogeneous healthcare environment. It is built on IBM's
unique, award-winning, virtualized and automated Grid Medical Archive
Solution (GMAS) used to protect and share critical medical and research
data.
"IBM is accomplishing an industry first by offering the most advanced
interoperable framework for healthcare systems with the IBM Healthcare
Information and Image Grid. This award-winning solution will enable an
integrated view of patient documents and images across the enterprise to
be accessed in real time at the point of care," said Dan Pelino, General
Manager for IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences.
"Through the HIIG, IBM is committed to offering the right tools,
solutions and services to transform healthcare systems and create more
value-focused healthcare."
GMAS archive solution gets high-performance capability
IBM has also announced new software features for the IBM Grid Medical
Archive Solution (GMAS), a high-performance, grid-based storage
solution. Its new software component, GAM 2.1 will now support
applications in digital pathology, mass spectrometry and high-throughput
screening that require ultimate performance and very reliable NAS
storage.
GAM was invented to manage and store huge amounts of archive data,
such as CT scans and mammograms, which are generally written only once
and rarely updated but must be frequently accessed. However, many
healthcare and research applications also produce vast amounts of
transactional data which needs to be captured, analyzed, shared, be
actively written, re-written and modified before it is archived or
deleted.
The new GAM 2.1 Distributed Gateway feature adds scalable NAS
capability to GMAS for transactional and research data, enabling
exceptional performance and support for up to 1 billion objects. This
Distributed Gateway also acts as a traditional GMAS gateway that can be
used to archive and protect data for life across any storage tier and
location.
As a result, medical and research facilities can leverage GMAS for
both research and transactional as well as reference data, while
eliminating the complexity, hassle and cost of managing multiple
solutions. The GAM v2.1 Distributed Control Node also adds more advanced
control node software replication features to improve image access and
network performance while still enabling universal data access from any
location.
New GAM 2.1 now supports IBM Blade Center and IBM System Storage N
series, continuing the GMAS track record of lowering long-term total
cost of ownership. Clients can see a 100% increase in storage density, a
reduction of up to 30% in hardware costs and 35% savings in power and
cooling. New VMWARE ESX support also allows clients to see up to a 6 to
1 compression of Gateways at the data centre. IBM GMAS adds iSCSI
support with IBM N series storage.
"IBM GMAS with GAM v.2.1 directly addresses our healthcare, life
sciences and research client's requirements for a single solution that
can handle both scalable NAS and long term reference data archive
requirements across the enterprise, all while lowering IT costs. This
combination of unique benefits we believe is unmatched in the industry
today," said Hugh Rivers, Business Line Executive, Healthcare and Life
Sciences Solutions, IBM Systems and Technology Group.
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