January/February 2006

The PlatinumOne series, comprised of premium in-room digital acquisition systems, provides advanced imaging capabilities required for complex interventional procedures.

Guidant Corp.’s VITALITY HE implantable cardioverter defibrillator combines the small, physiologic profile and exceptional longevity with the capacity to deliver more energy to defibrillate the patient. It also provides excellent diagnostics and fast charge times.

Focused for CRT applications, the 4D LV-Analysis software is a new diagnostic tool to address problems and to help clinicians to quantify left ventricular dyssynchrony and identify responders reliably. Newly established dyssynchrony (SDI) cut-off values now allow better patient selection as well as the identification of patients who are currently not considered for CRT but may also benefit.

Outfitted with the new real-time link, the Allura Xper FD 10 and 10/10 cardiovascular X-ray systems help interventional cardiologists better control and manage procedures by providing important functions, such as StentBoost and Allura 3D-CA, at their fingertips.

Major enhancements to the PicomEnterprise software that provide a robust foundation for enterprise imaging will be showcased at the HIMSS conference. Central to the system is the PicomTSM, a high throughput and fault tolerant transaction service manager that can handle clinical and nonclinical data objects.

The FDA granted Conor Medsystems Inc. full approval to enroll up to 1,700 patients in its heart stent clinical trial.

Intensive care units are highly dependent on the efficient transfer of physiological data to multiple healthcare providers. In the delivery of healthcare in 2006 there exists a strong rationale for a tight relationship between critical care and information technology (Celi, Hassan, Marquardt, Breslow, & Rosenfeld, 2001).

What factors are driving increased adoption of healthcare information technology, otherwise known as HIT? Clinical IT and technology in general are getting a lot of focus from the government, from the industry, from clinicians — and the drive to make healthcare safer is what's driving overall growth of clinical IT and technology adoption.