Video images of heart operations stored in Galichia's new archives

Lainie Mazzullo

Galichia Heart Hospital, in business for less than four months, has installed a digital information recording and archival system that can store detailed information on every patient at the hospital for up to 10 years.With the OptiCore system, developed by New Jersey-based OptiMed Technologies, a physician can click on a patient's name and within seconds access video images of any procedures the patient has had at the hospital, any X-rays and a full medical record.

The system, which holds 2.5 terabytes to 3 terabytes of information, has far-reaching uses, says Todd Harris, cath lab director at Galichia Heart Hospital. Digital static X-rays, cath lab images and echocardiogram images are already in use at Galichia, Harris says. Now the hospital plans to put this and more information on intranet and Internet sites for consultation purposes. Harris says the hospital could be almost completely free from using film three months from now. The system, which costs between $500,000 and $800,000, consists of a main hub, or "jukebox," that is located in a small control room.

There are four review stations and three recording stations around the building that allow physicians to input and read information.This new system is a far cry from what most health care facilities use, Harris says. CD-ROM storage is common, but each patient's information is kept on a separate CD, making data retrieval and disc storage an issue, he says. Speed is also a problem with "digital linear tape," a competing archiving format that requires 10 to 15 minutes to access patient information, Harris says."That kind of wait is excruciating," Harris says. "For a cardiologist, time is the biggest thing. This is quick and will archive our images, quite literally, forever.

"Improved efficiency The lack of wait time is the biggest advantage of the system", Harris says. Most images are automatically uploaded to the system and others can be manually entered within a few minutes. And because patients' images are immediately available on the computer, patients and their families can see the results of each procedure within minutes of it being done. Before, Harris says, it took about 30 minutes for the film to be developed. By then, physicians were usually working on another case and not available for consultation."We don't want people to leave with the same questions they came in with," he says. Howard Boyle, territorial sales manager for OptiMed, says without having to hunt around for tapes and films, physicians can diagnose the patient faster. The entire flow of work is improved, Boyle says.

Efraim Landa, chairman and CEO of OptiMed, says Galichia Heart Hospital is the only medical facility in Kansas with the new OptiCore technology. Landa says the productivity of doctors' work has improved dramatically at the more than 150 health care facilities around the world that have this archiving system. "It makes the doctor that much more efficient in providing medical care," Landa says.

Image manipulation Another advantage of the OptiCore system, Harris says, is that stored images can be manipulated to give physicians a better idea of the patient's situation. They can not only zoom in and out of a picture, but they also can adjust the brightness and remove objects, such as bones, from the picture to get a better view of arteries, Harris says. The Web will soon be a part of the picture. The hospital is in the process of developing intranet and Internet sites -- with firewalls -- that will allow physicians to look at a patient's images live from outside of the facility. If there are ever any questions, specialists can view the images from any PC and consult with the acting physician, Harris says. This lets physicians analyze images like they haven't been able to before, Dr. Joseph Galichia says. "We now have an incredible ability to see things," Galichia says.

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