Vendor Neutral Image Archive Goes Live in Quebec

    TOWSON, MD, August 05, 2009 /24-7PressRelease/ -- At 6:00PM EDT on July 21, 2009, the first clinical study - a 1600 image CT study, was acquired and stored to RUIS Montreal-McGill's DI-r (Diagnostic Imaging Repository). The study was performed and reported using the Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) and Radiology Information System (RIS) at l'Hopital General du Lakeshore in Pointe-Claire, Quebec.

The study was transferred 22 kilometers over Quebec's RTSS (Reseau de Telecommunication du secteur Socio-Sanitaire) network from Hopital General du Lakeshore to the primary Quebec regional data center located on the Boulevard De Maisonneuve, in Montreal. The study was replicated at a second Quebec regional data center located some 10 kilometers from the primary regional data center.

DeJarnette Research Systems of Towson, Maryland provided the core interface, storage and database software synchronization technology, while overall project management was provided by McKesson. DeJarnette and McKesson integration engineers worked together in deployment of the system. McKesson managed the consortium, deployment logistics and interface to the customer, and also worked with RUIS personnel in testing the deployed solution.

"This DI-r will be used as a long-term archive and as a tool to share medical images and reports across all the hospitals connected to it," states Yves Domaine, program manager, McKesson Medical Imaging Group. "The commitment to success and dedication by all team members, from DeJarnette, McKesson, RUIS Montreal-McGill and Hôpital General du Lakeshore, resulted in this significant and successful implementation."
This is the first PACS "vendor neutral" image archive to go live in the three Quebec RUIS projects. This "vendor neutral" image archive supports both RUIS Montreal and RUIS McGill covering 68% of Quebec province. Initially the archive will store over six million studies annually, growing to over 10 million annually within 5 years.

The first facility go-live for the RUIS Montreal-McGill DI-r project occurred in record time compared to the other RUIS DI-r projects, with the installation and testing of two synchronized data centers, a full test environment and the first medical treatment facility taking just seven months. Another twelve medical treatment facilities in Quebec are planned to be brought online with the DI-r by years end and a total of ninety-four facilities will be connected to the DI-r by project completion. The project is part of a Canada-wide DI-r initiative funded by Canada Health Infoway.

DeJarnette's xDL , Cross-Enterprise Document Librarian is the core technology for this DI-r deployment. The xDL software was designed to provide all the benefits of medical image data sharing without requiring the connected PACS and other information systems to adhere to the IHE XDS integration profile. xDL allows for the deployment of sophisticated medical image data sharing in today's medical imaging environment while offering support for the emerging IHE data sharing standards (XDS, XDS-I, PIX, PDQ, etc.). xDL is a totally scalable solution with support for a small, single facility "vendor neutral" archive up to the largest national "vendor neutral" data sharing archive.

According to Fred Ganong, DeJarnette's vice president of engineering, "xDL when connected to a PACS allows that PACS to appear as if it natively supports the IHE XDS profiles. In a sharing environment with disparate PACS and RIS, xDL performs the local context conversion which makes the shared data clinically useful."

Alain Gauvin of McGill University, the lead architect for the project stated, "The xDL solution is essential in
allowing us to address our considerable interoperability challenge, which requires us to connect many different RIS, PACS and digital dictation systems to our central archive. The XDS-I support makes xDL ideally suited for subsequently integrating the archive under the umbrella of a unique, province-wide, XDS registry to reference all studies produced in our provincial affinity domain."

David DiNoia, DeJarnette's director of program management and RUIS McGill-Montreal project manager stated, "This shared medical image archive deployment is one of the largest and most sophisticated ever attempted. It covers two thirds of Quebec province, ninety-four medical treatment facilities, two large data centers, some of the world's most sophisticated database synchronization technology, a storage GRID architecture, the interface of seven disparate PACS vendors, the interface of six disparate RIS vendors, the interface of seven disparate dictation system vendors, all in various combinations, while providing support for image and report distribution to nearly 10,000 referring physicians. It's really big and it is PACS and RIS vendor neutral!"

Suzanne L'Esperance, chief project manager for RUIS Montreal-McGill said: "We are all delighted by this success and can't wait to roll out the solution to all our sites. We are looking forward to our future. This is also an important step for the Dossier de sante du Quebec (Quebec electronic health record) which will improve the quality of health care and services offered throughout the province."

More information about xDL can be obtained at http://www.dejarnette.com/DataSharing.htm.
For more information about DeJarnette Research Systems, Inc., its products and services, contact Philip Rispoli, Vice President of Business Development at 410-583-0680 x109, or [email protected].
For more information about McKesson, its products and services, visit www.mckesson.com.
For more information about the RUIS McGill-Montreal DI-r Project, contact Danièle Frechette, Change
Management and Communication Specialist at [email protected].

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