HIMSS: Symantec unveils image archiving, sharing app

Symantec unveiled Symantec Health, a new hosted medical image archiving and sharing application for healthcare providers, at the 2010 HIMSS conference in Atlanta last week.

Symantec Health includes two components, Health Safe and Health Image Share. Health Safe is a hosted source application for storing medical images in Symantec-owned image data centers, according to Lori Wright, vice president and general manager of the electronic health group at Symantec.

Health Safe features include capacity-on-demand and business analytics to provide budget predictability and control and business continuity to ensure that medical images are secure and available in the event of a business disruption, a disaster or a security breach, according to Symantec, of Mountain View, Calif.

Built on Health Safe technology, Symantec Health Image Share allows healthcare providers to share images and reports with non-affiliated hospitals and physicians over the internet, according to Symantec.

“We've approached image-sharing through a social media model,” said Wright at the conference. “Health Image Share requires no software to download. If a physician is invited to review a set of images, he or she will receive a link via email to log-in to the application and, after authenticating, will be able to see all relevant image information for that patient. There’s no software to download or applications to install before using Symantec Health Image Share.”

Some features of Health Image Share include the ability for a physician to share an image or series of images with another physician, even if the two healthcare providers are not affiliated, Symantec said, adding that the receiving physician can then review the images in any standard web browser and communicate privately with the referring doctor in a secure forum.

According to Wright, imaging across different modalities such as angiograms, ultrasound and cardiograms can go in the Symantec Health hosting application for side-by-side viewing. In addition, Symantec Health Image Share’s interface allows clinicians to leave messages in public comment or note fields, or privately communicate with physicians or patients about the images, Wright said.

Symantec Health Safe is currently available, and Symantec Health Image Share is expected to be available in the coming weeks, the company concluded.

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