SALT LAKE CITY - Faced with capital-acquisition constraints, many small- and mid-sized healthcare institutions decide to implement a PACS network one piece at a time. For many of these facilities, the decision has proved to be costly due to obsolescence or compatibility issues.
NovaRad, an Orem, UT-based PACS and teleradiology developer, is touting the capabilities of its component-based products to mitigate these problems. The company is making its second appearance at the Symposium for Computer Applications in Radiology.
The company offers a full suite of PACS applications such as capture software for scanners and frame-grabbers, DICOM Web servers and routers, and clinical review stations and remote-client viewing. Each product can be purchased separately or as part of a complete PACS.
NovaRad’s software is DICOM 3.0-compliant and was designed for the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system. In addition, the company offers 24 x 7 support and a software-obsolescence package for all its products.
The developer has quietly been building its market presence over the past decade, with sales doubling in each of the past three years, according to national sales manager Kay Jex. "Our customer base is largely in the U.S, but we have had some recent success penetrating the South American market," Jex said.
At the SCAR meeting, the company will be showcasing two new product introductions: a DICOM archive manager that supports multiple types of storage media and a Java-based client viewing application.
The DICOM archive manager uses a multithreaded process to simultaneously handle multiple storage media, such as digital linear tape (DLT) or magneto-optical disc (MOD). The product features pre-fetching capabilities via a patient-folder storage mechanism, and variable compression algorithms for additional compression as an image ages.
NovaRad’s Java offering is a Web-based viewing client that offers most of the image-manipulation functionality of the company’s clinical review station. It supports 12 to 16-bit DICOM image display, voice annotation, text-based integration for patient reports and demographic data, and progressive image compression to enhance image-transfer speeds over slower phone lines.
By Jonathan S. Batchelor
AuntMinnie.com staff writer
May 4, 2001
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