AT&T Selects Acuo Technologies for Cloud-Based Healthcare Storage Solutions

DALLAS, Feb. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- AT&T* and Acuo Technologies®, a leading provider of comprehensive software solutions to the medical imaging industry for archiving, collaboration and migration services, announced a strategic alliance to develop vendor-neutral, cloud-based medical imaging storage solutions for healthcare providers and suppliers. Acuo is the latest technology ally to join the AT&T ForHealth(SM) portfolio of mHealth, cloud-based, and telehealth products and solutions.

Hospitals and providers are facing the risk of capacity shortage to securely store and share patient medical images and information. Many of the disparate, proprietary vendor systems in place today that manage and store images will only become more taxed as the population ages and imaging volumes and sizes increase. According to Frost & Sullivan, the number of medical imaging procedures is projected to reach the 1 billion mark next year.

IDC Health Insight's U.S. Health Industry Provider 2011 Top 10 Predictions report foresees the use of cloud storage for medical image archive data as providers begin to implement vendor-neutral archives. Balanced against this explosive growth is the need to share medical images outside the hospital's systems with referring physicians and other facilities.  

Under the new agreement, AT&T plans to utilize Acuo Technologies Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) Services Grid™, combined with AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service(SM), to create a cloud-based offering for storing, accessing and sharing medical images. The solution will feature a vendor-neutral platform that supports disparate picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) on an as-needed, pay-as-you-go model, avoiding costly capital investment in storage infrastructure.

"Medical image management is one of the biggest challenges in healthcare today, as the amount of storage required will only increase in the coming years," said Randall Porter, assistant vice president, AT&T ForHealth Solutions. "We look forward to working closely with Acuo to enable access, viewing and storage of any medical image for any patient at virtually any time. As with AT&T Healthcare Community Online, our cloud-based health information exchange offer, AT&T brings scale to our cloud-based solution for medical imaging that is unsurpassed in healthcare today."

"Cloud is a natural solution for managing medical images, as the pay-as-you-go model is a very attractive cost model for today's healthcare IT consumer," said Jeff Timbrook, CEO of Acuo Technologies. "We are thrilled to work with AT&T, and healthcare customers will benefit from the latest generation of vendor-neutral storage systems. AT&T's proven expertise in highly secure cloud storage will quickly become a leading offering to manage medical images."

Today's news follows the AT&T ForHealth November announcement in which AT&T announced that it is developing a new set of cloud-based, medical image archive services and security services that will give healthcare providers highly secure access to clinical data in real time, scaled to handle the huge bandwidth demands driven by live video, images and medical records.

AT&T and Acuo will demonstrate their capabilities at the HIMSS11 conference Feb. 20-24, in Orlando at booths #4862 and #3139.

Learn more information about AT&T ForHealth.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

About Acuo Technologies

For over a decade, Acuo Technologies has been delivering innovative solutions that put healthcare providers in control of their data. Strong adherence to industry standards combined with patented middleware solutions provide scalable and customizable storage management solutions that deliver the ultimate promise of vendor independence and freedom to choose the best options that meet the needs of the enterprise. By choosing to deploy over 550 DICOM Services Grid™ software solutions around the world, Acuo customers are in better control of their data.

About AT&T

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is a premier communications holding company. Its subsidiaries and affiliates – AT&T operating companies – are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation's fastest mobile broadband network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high speed Internet and voice services. A leader in mobile broadband, AT&T also offers the best wireless coverage worldwide, offering the most wireless phones that work in the most countries.  It also offers advanced TV services under the AT&T U-verse® and AT&T |DIRECTV brands. The company's suite of IP-based business communications services is one of the most advanced in the world. In domestic markets, AT&T Advertising Solutions and AT&T Interactive are known for their leadership in local search and advertising. In 2010, AT&T again ranked among the 50 Most Admired Companies by FORTUNE® magazine. 

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