Apple to launch iPhone 3G with medical imaging capabilities

Apple plans to launch its iPhone 3G July 11, with add-on applications offering medical imaging capabilities. 

Apple has plans to offer 2 medical imaging applications for the new iPhone 3G (due for launch in the 11th Jul in the US). The company believes the iPhone’s “multi-touch interface” will be suitable for medical imaging as it is data intensive and requires considerable user interaction.

According to Apple, there are two medical applications slated for the iPhone 3G;

1. MiMVista – used by doctors who need to access patient’s body scan (e.g. MRI scans) and video when the are out and about outside of the office or hospital. The doctor can even manipulate the images on the iPhone using the touch sensitive screen,
2. Modality - used by medical students and teachers so that they can access various medical information directly to thier iPhone. It might be that the medical student needs to access specific information about the human body. Modality allows them to zoom into details of a body part for much clearer details.

Check out this video on youtube on an actual demo on MiMVista and Modality.

Google-based search tool mines RIS data

As Douglas correctly pointed out:

“Radiology text and image data account for a significant portion of patient electronic medical record information in hospital archives, yet few means exist to aid radiologists in extracting relevant information from these databases.

Granted that there are Teaching PACS and MIRC (Medical Imaging Resource Center, see here), there are so much potential lying in the archives of medical imaging information systems (like RIS, CVIS and PACS etc) simply because its very difficult to get the data of interest with ease.

Interesting: Radiology Art

After spending more than 35 hours travelling, I managed to reach my hotel in the US (the hotel is nice – by Hilton), however, that’s not what I want to tell you folks,

This blog entry is about Radiology Art - a project dedicated to the deeper visualization of various objects that hold unique cultural importance in modern society. Images for this project are acquired as DICOM images and processed in Osirix.

I seriously like the stuff (images) they have done and would love to see more. Personally, I have a hardcopy film of a Laptop which I decorate my study room with, and I think its beautiful.

Visit www.radiologyart.com to enjoy the work (its worth your while. Seriously).

Thats all for now

 

Ramblings: Flying off again, this time to the United States

Seems that I’m doing alot of travelling these day.

In a few hours time, I would be flying off to the United States for work related training (yup, give enough training and you get some back )

Its going to be a long flight (23 hours each way) and heavy technical training for 3-4 days, I reckon I will be ‘offline’ for a while but I’ll try my best to blog as well as author a few articles (I just wrote a short piece on the 8th Asia Pacific Congress of Cardiovascular & Interventional Radiology but that’s for the company’s newsletter).

Till my next post

GE Launches Centricity Training Program

If there is one thing that GE is doing right, it’s this – a global certification program for the company’s Centricity Enterprise solution, which will train, certify, and support leading systems integrators and ISVs around the world.

While I am not sure how deep the knowledge transfer will be or how is it delivered, the idea is good (but I think Microsoft can do a better job with a Microsoft Certified PACS Aministrator, boy would I love to get one of those).

Global group creates framework to regulate teleradiology

 Establishing uniform standards for clinical teleradiology seems like the next logical step in the world of Radiology but boy this step has sure been long.

Good news is, an international network of radiology organizations (including the American College of Radiology, RSNA, European Society of Radiology, and World Health Organization, among other organizations)has drafted guidelines (titled the “Top 10 Principles of International Clinical Teleradiology”)

According to Dr. Lawrence Lau, chair of the network- it took the International Clinical Teleradiology Standards Workgroup 3 years to review the literature and agree on broad standards as many parties are involved.

Zonare releases upgraded ultrasound platform

I like Zonare. While I cannot comment on the clinical quality of their images (but feedback from clinicains have so far been ok).

I blog about Zonare back in 22th December 2007 so is a good followup – Zonare Medical Systems released new upgrades for its z.one ultrasound system at the 2008 Society for Vascular Surgery annual meeting.

Performance highlighted includes;

Health Level Seven (Singapore) Launch Event

 Well, its finally here.

HL7 Singapore has official been established and will serve as a local Affiliate of HL7 Inc, formed to support the development, promotion and implementation of HL7 standards in Singapore.

The official launch of the HL7 Singapore affiliate is on 27th June 2008, more details are available at www.hl7.org.sg

 

Microsoft, Kaiser to share info across e-health systems

Healthcare insurance provider – Kaiser Permanente  has ‘join the ranks’ of the Mayo Clinic and New York Presbyterian Hospital in helping Microsoft provide a central online repository for patient health records (PHRs).

According to the New York Times, Kaiser reveals a pilot program for 156,000 employees to exchange information between Kaiser’s My Health Manager PHR and Microsoft’s HealthVault PHR platform, if successful, the program will be extended to more than 8.7 million Kaiser members in the United States.

Ramblings: 8th Asia Pacific Congress of Cardiovascular & Interventional Radiology (APCCVIR)

I’m heading off to the 8^thAsia Pacific Congress of Cardiovascular & Interventional Radiology (APCCVIR) in Kuala Lumpur (my flight is taking off in a couple of hours).

The APCCVIR this year is organised by;

1. Malaysian Society of Interventional Radiology
2. College of Radiology (of Malaysia)
3. Academy of Medicine of Malaysia

In addition, the 8^thAPCCVIR is held in conjunction with the 31^stAnnual Scientific Meeting of the College of Radiology as well as the EINR III 2008 (Endovascular and Interventional Neuroradiology Symposium).

Major event eh? So one might ask, why am I (the regional Cardiology Informatics Product Manager) doing in a major Radiology conference? Seriously, I have no idea, someone saw the word Cardiovascular and decided that I should be there, but then again, there are always some co-relation between Interventional Radiology and Cardiovascular (I’ll find out soon).

While the event will last 4 days, I reckon I can still blog as I get Internet access back at the hotel, the only question is – will I have any energy left after a long day of clinical demo?