Merge Healthcare, MGH sign agreement to build testing environment for new mobile healthcare applications

Based on their respective expertise in imaging IT and clinical workflow, Merge Healthcare (NASDAQ: MRGE) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have signed a partnership agreement to build a testing environment for new mobile healthcare applications.

“Our vision is to find new applications that blow away the preconceived notions of today’s reading workflow”

“Our vision is to find new applications that blow away the preconceived notions of today’s reading workflow,” says Keith Dreyer, MD, Vice Chairman of Radiology Informatics at MGH. “The technology has arrived to push medical imaging review and reporting out to mobile devices, and free the radiologist from having to be handcuffed in a dark reading room. As a practicing radiologist for over 15 years, this is one of the most exciting pilots I have ever undertaken. As the leader in “edge” solutions like eFilm, Merge is the right partner to make it work.”

The partnership will begin by testing additional uses for the eFilm Mobile™ solution from Merge. This new application, currently approved for use on an Apple iPod® Touch or iPhone®, extends the popular eFilm Workstation® functionality into the pocket of the physician. Image checking, routing and distribution can all happen by finger touch, and these only scratch the surface on the potential of this sort of solution. Report signing and dictation are examples of additional applications that could enable full workflow for radiologists wherever they need to be, instead of where they have to be.

“We are really going to change how people think about imaging and image distribution,” says Tim Kulbago, Merge General Manager. “Just as eFilm Workstation changed the way the industry thought about diagnostic viewing software, eFilm Mobile is the start of a new paradigm in mobile workflow for medical imaging. MGH is world-renowned for its clinical leadership and vision, and we look forward to working together to bring solid, tested and clinically relevant mobile applications to physicians.”