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IBM, SIEMENS TO DELIVER MEDICAL IMAGING MGMT SYSTEMS

IBM and Siemens AG announced that they have signed a global agreement to deliver medical imaging management systems for the health care industry.

The IBM-Siemens relationship addresses management of the rapidly growing volume of digital medical images produced by radiological examinations around the world. Medical imaging management systems provide hospitals and clinics with a cost-effective method to manage this data and improve patient care by making important medical information available whenever and wherever it is needed, to support diagnosis and treatment. SIENET, the integrated radiology suite -- the fully integrated RIS/PACS System from Siemens Medical Solutions in conjunction with IBM eServer and IBM TotalStorage technology -- are currently used by some of the world's most advanced medical centers and hospitals. Two of the most recent customers to benefit from the IBM-Siemens solution are University Hospital Brno in the Czech Republic and St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.

Customer Engagements

University Hospital Brno in the Czech Republic is working with IBM and Siemens to help support a transition to an entirely paperless and filmless clinical environment. Hospital staff use IBM and Siemens technology to manage clinical images from the 400,000 examinations a year that the hospital conducts. Connected to the hospital's main clinical information system, the new solution provides doctors with fast, single-system access to all archived scans and related patient data. Authorized users throughout the network can easily access and retrieve images, browse data from different sources and exchange information with other doctors. The new digital medical imaging system at University Hospital Brno is unequaled in scope in the Central and East European Region.

One of Canada's finest academic health care providers, St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, has turned to IBM and Siemens Medical to create an integrated patient care management solution to replace their paper and film based system. It provides hospital staff and physicians with online tools that allow medical images to be stored, retrieved and viewed electronically. The new technology from IBM and Siemens provides a distributed, centralized source of patient data helping to enhance clinical workflow processes and improve clinical outcomes for patients. The IBM-Siemens medical imaging management system supports the hospital in its vision to provide high quality, proactive and personalized patient care and allows for greater collaboration across the hospital.

IBM and Siemens will jointly market Siemens SIENET Cosmos and SIENET Magic Imaging Management Systems running on IBM eServer and IBM TotalStorage platforms, including IBM 's open middleware. On sales to new customers, Siemens will offer IBM as a platform of choice. IBM will provide consulting, customization and integration services for joint IBM and Siemens solutions.

"Over 150 Petabytes of medical images are created annually worldwide -- this is 75 times more than is required to store all the holdings of every academic research library in the U.S. Worldwide, health care organizations are turning to leading IT providers for innovative and cost-effective ways to integrate and manage this data and improve the quality, speed and accuracy of patient care," said Caroline Kovac, general manager of IBM health care and Life Sciences. "IBM is working with its partners to deliver the innovation these clients seek. IBM's server, storage, middleware, consulting and integration services in conjunction with Siemens SIENET Cosmos and SIENET Magic image management systems provide a compelling solution for hospitals and clinics that want to increase efficiencies and serve patients better."

"IBM has consistently offered the innovative technologies needed to support health care solutions," said Ulrich Viethen, group vice president of Health Services, Soarian Imaging Enterprise at Siemens Medical Solutions. "These technologies are crucial to our customers' abilities to manage the growing volume of medical images. The alliance between Siemens and IBM will ensure the best possible solution for our global customer base."