From the March 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
This report originally appeared in the March 2011 issue of DOTmed Business News
By Emmanuel Cordonnier
Thirty years ago, ads and articles in radiology journals and even trade newspapers, predicted that the demise of X-ray film was eminent. Now, three decades later, Kodak has just announced it will no longer manufacture X-ray film and equipment. However, on their Web site, FUJIFILM Medical Systems still offers a complete line of “traditional” medical imaging films and film handling equipment for modern radiology departments.
Today, a quick search on Aunt Minnie Web site reveals no less than 23 different articles discussing Cloud Computing related to medical imaging. Many of those articles come from the dozen companies whose advertisements and press releases announce the early demise of the CD ROM, to be replaced by the electronic study transfer and storage of images. I noted with a smile that a team of researchers in the UK has already provided a “dummies” guide to cloud computing and virtualization technologies.
A recent article in Health Imaging & IT proclaims “Virtualization, and the resulting storage consolidation, delivers a host of benefits including reduced costs, streamlined IT resource management and accelerated application deployment. It’s both simpler and more efficient to consolidate, the first phase on the journey to the private cloud.”
I tend to be a bit more conservative in my evaluation of the cloud. The “press”, adequately supplied with brochures and press releases by companies describing the benefits of their Cloud Computing products would have us believe that attaching your institution and its radiology department to the next cloud will take you to the moon.
Our company also offers a cloud-based product. It’s called ETIAM Secure Medical Networking. We developed it, installed it in nearly 100 hospitals in Europe and have supported the product for more than three years. I can assure you that the CD-ROM system is still alive and well in all those hospitals, and is an important tool in the transfer and storage of medical images. I can also assure you that the first year required extra effort on our part to insure that SMN met all the needs and demands of the early adopters who chose SMN as their cloud-based service.
Here are some things we’ve learned from our experience that are important to any institution considering connecting with a cloud:
1. Even with the best electronic means of transferring images, CD-ROMs will not disappear overnight. (Just as X-ray films are still with us.)
