Acuo Emerges in KLAS Study as Prime Example of Provider Image Archiving Interoperability

BLOOMINGTON, Minn., Aug. 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Acuo Technologies®, the world leader in high-performance software and services for clinical content management and data migration, announced today that KLAS recently released the results of a new study focused on enterprise imaging strategies among U.S. healthcare providers. These organizations are at various stages of addressing federal meaningful use requirements, including "getting the right image to the right place at the right time" in order to enhance quality of care, improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.

According to the study, vendor neutral archive (VNA) strategies are becoming more popular. In describing the advantage of a VNA, the report stated "a VNA's true advantage is that it is agnostic, interoperable, and in theory can more effectively manage, archive, and distribute images and clinical media regardless of vendor, device origin, or content format." Of providers interviewed by KLAS for the study, 27% indicated that a VNA would be central to their enterprise imaging strategy (selected most often by hospitals with more than 500 beds).

The KLAS report, entitled "Enterprise Imaging 2012: Provider Strategies and Insights," identified Acuo Technologies as a VNA market pioneer, saying the company "works well with a myriad of imaging vendors." An Acuo client interviewed for the study commented that "Acuo is our long-term vendor neutral archive. All of our imaging systems in the institution now use Acuo as their long-term storage." The report further elaborated that "Acuo's [Universal Clinical Platform] technology is being used in radiology for cardiac cath, echo, EKG, and radiation oncology across vendors like GE, Siemens and Philips," citing the scenario as "a prime example of what providers hope an interoperable image archive can do for them."

"Acuo's KLAS performance results are a testament to the hard work and commitment by our team over the past twelve years, assisting healthcare organizations to become proficient at accessing and controlling clinical data previously held captive in PACS archives," said Jeff Timbrook, CEO of Acuo Technologies. "Our Universal Clinical Platform is a truly PACS-independent solution that unlocks the value of provider data. It extracts rich clinical content from departmental silos so that clinical images and related content become more liquid, making them easier to move to the point of need. A PACS-agnostic archive ultimately gives healthcare organizations greater choice and flexibility when it comes to executing the best clinical, business and technology strategies that benefit patients, providers and other stakeholders."  

The report mentioned Acuo's increasing number of vendor partnerships and growing VNA mindshare in suggesting Acuo as a "viable archive option for those that do not want to solely rely on a PACS archive." Acuo strengths highlighted in the report include VNA capabilities, strength in routing, distributing and managing images, experience in PACS data migration and ability to work with multiple PACS vendors across different departments.  For more information on this report, visit www.KLASresearch.com. 

About Acuo Technologies

Acuo Technologies, with headquarters in Minneapolis, MN, was founded in 2000 with the objective of developing the first enterprise-wide collaborative Universal Clinical Platform (UCP) solution for medical image content, both DICOM and Non-DICOM. Today, Acuo supports implementations of UCP around the world, including locations in Africa, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. For more information on providing superior clinical content management and data migration while simplifying operations and reducing costs, visit www.acuotech.com.

DICOM is the registered trademark of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association for its standards publications relating to digital communications of medical information.

SOURCE Acuo Technologies