Pay-as-you-examine PACS deal for Finland

Kodak has agreed a three year pay-as-you-examine partnership for picture archiving and web-viewing services in the South-west Finland Hospital District for the four hospitals and 24 municipalities in the Satakunta region.

Eastman Kodak Health Group will deploy its Carestream PACS and information management solutions to the 28 sites, allowing them to centrally archive, view and manage 200,000 annual patient studies from a data centre.

The data centre will be located in the regions’ main hospital, the Turku University Hospital.

The new deal follows the success of the RATU project in five hospital districts in North Finland, implemented last November, which successfully integrated medical imaging and information across the region.

The unique deal will see all 28 hospitals in the Satakunta region purchasing the images archived in the Data Centre each time they wish to examine the case.

Yrjö Koivusalo, IT manager at Turku University Hospital, said: “This latest innovative agreement enables Turku to offer advanced digital technology to hospitals across the Satakunta region at a set fee per exam.”

He added that the cost of the infrastructure would be offset ‘as part of their operational budget, rather than through total investment.’

The Satakunta district will use Kodak’s Carestream solution, which will enable clinicians and administrative staff to collect and share patient information – including medical images – to improve patient care.

Kodak says that it will provide an efficient method for managing information and images, captured by a variety of diagnostic imaging modalities, to create image-enabled electronic medical records.

The software has been installed in the Turku hospital, and is planned to go live later this month.

Two central hospitals, Satakunta Central Hospital and Rauma Hospital, will be the first sites to get access to the system, with the remaining 26 sites gaining complete functionality by early next year. Over 2000 staff will use the system as part of their daily jobs.

A spokesperson for Kodak Finland told EHI: “Patient care will improve due to faster services and multiple possibilities of sites for radiological scanning. All patient records will be easily accessible and will minimise bureaucracy-easy access to care.”

In the UK, both NHS Scotland and the BUPA hospitals network have signed up to the Carestream software from Eastman Kodak’s Health Group, and the sites with the software installed have found it easy and efficient to use.