Carestream Health and Alibaba Health Sign Agreement to Create Medical Image Management Cloud Platform in China
ROCHESTER, N.Y., Feb. 25 — Carestream Health announced it has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Alibaba Health (HKEx:00241) to create a Medical Image Management Cloud Platform that supports reading and sharing of clinical images—including radiology, cardiology, oncology, endoscopy, dermatology, pathology and more. Using Alibaba Health’s online healthcare services platform Alijk.com, Carestream will supply enterprise image management capabilities using its Clinical Collaboration Platform.
The Medical Image Management Cloud Platform will provide access to telehealth services for CT, MR, X-ray, sonograms, echocardiograms (ECGs), dermatology and other medical imaging studies. Physicians and specialists can view reports and images to make diagnostic and treatment decisions—and patients also can view and share their own medical information.
“This partnership can help lead the way to create a new generation of consumer-based healthcare,” said Ludovic D’Aprea, Carestream’s General Manager for Healthcare Information Solutions. “Easy and secure online access to medical images and radiology reports can provide physicians and specialists with a more holistic view of each patient’s condition, and help enhance clinical collaboration for diagnostic and treatment decisions.”
The new medical imaging cloud platform will be an important expansion to the country’s fast-growing healthcare infrastructure and is modeled after Alibaba Health’s current online pharmacy services. The goal is to establish an ecosystem of services for doctors, patients, pharmacy and third-party medical service providers that can improve the quality and efficiency of medical services for more than 1 billion Chinese citizens. For example, a patient in Ningxia can grant a specialist at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital 1,200 kilometers away access to his/her health record on Alibaba Health’s Medical Image Management Cloud Platform.
“This new service allows a specialist to make real-time diagnostic and treatment decisions. It also facilitates patients’ accessibility to medical consultation by eliminating the need to travel to healthcare facilities. It is a step forward to offer an exceptional customer experience in the healthcare industry," said Ni Jianwen, Vice President of Alibaba Health.
Carestream, a proven cloud-based services provider managing over 15 billion images in many countries, can enable capabilities including:
- An advanced diagnostic viewer radiologists can use to detect and monitor cancer and other diseases
- New reporting capabilities that present interactive hyperlinks to critical images and quantitative analysis in the form of comparison tables and charts, which oncologists and referring physicians prefer
- Standards-based management and sharing of imaging information and the ability to link these exams to each patient
- Bringing unstructured data—including endoscopy, dermatology, pathology, cardiology and lab results—into the clinical workflow
- Allowing physicians to access a patient’s clinical history including images, video, waveforms and reports from mobile devices using Vue Motion universal viewer; and
- A patient portal that enables registered patients to securely access, manage, and share their own clinical data.
This project spotlights Carestream’s success in delivering enterprise image management and vendor neutral archiving as onsite or cloud solutions to leading healthcare facilities. InMedica, a division of IMS research, has recognized Carestream as one of the largest suppliers of vendor neutral archiving in the world.