Frost & Sullivan Honors Acuo Technologies with Product Leadership Award in Medical Imaging Informatics

BLOOMINGTON, Minn., Nov. 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the medical imaging informatics marketplace, Frost & Sullivan has honored Acuo Technologies with the 2011 North American Product Leadership Award for Acuo's flagship product suite, the Universal Clinical Platform (UCP3) with its unique DICOM Services Grid. In the award announcement, Frost & Sullivan analysts recognized UCP3 as a leading medical imaging IT middleware solution that provides end-to-end image lifecycle management, including image management, archiving, workflow, data migration and analytics applications as Web services, which can be deployed enterprise wide.

"As the market enters the next phase in its move toward next generation healthcare," explains Frost & Sullivan Principal Analyst Nadim Daher, "securing long term storage of huge amounts of patient data is one of the most constraining challenges facing healthcare providers today. With the traditional PACS paradigm showing limitations due to high dependence on PACS vendors and expensive systems integration and interoperability, forward-thinking vendors like Acuo are able to help providers build new efficiency into their data strategy."

Frost & Sullivan's research points out that the Universal Clinical Platform builds on the leading edge vendor neutral archiving (VNA) capabilities Acuo has fine-tuned throughout the past twelve years, and embraces cutting edge technologies including IT virtualization, service oriented delivery and cloud computing. Originally DICOM centric, Acuo has expanded its capabilities in recent years into broader enterprise content management (ECM) that also incorporates non-DICOM data related to imaging.  

"One of the core competencies of Acuo is to consolidate images and information and utilize the integrated platform to image-enable electronic medical records (EMR) and healthcare information exchanges (HIE)," remarks Daher. "This allows providers to distribute the imaging component across the various producers and users of medical imaging in the enterprise, aggregating, federating and synchronizing the various PACS and RIS systems already in place."

By distributing relevant clinical information to the right stakeholders and doing so in a secure, fluid and controlled manner, providers deploying Acuo's solutions are experiencing both short-term and long-term benefits. UCP3's protected access to data that are more "liquid" is a critical step in aligning the interests of healthcare providers, payers and patients. As such, the image-enabled EMR foundation and its overarching 'protelligence' layer, constitute an invaluable force in achieving the mandated healthcare IT improvements and meaningful use.

The extreme flexibility and scalability of UCP3 is evident in the company's diverse customer base that includes both large and small, centralized and distributed healthcare IT ecosystems.  Acuo's local intelligence workflow and the combination of clinical and business analytics tools enables providers to truly reap the value of 'big data' in their mission to increase operational efficiency and enhance patient outcomes.

"Unlike many other vendors in the medical imaging informatics arena," said Daher, "Acuo Technologies has continued to experience dynamic growth both organic and through industry partnerships. Every business metric seems to testify to Acuo's continued success in the marketplace. Its customer base is expanding, its revenues are increasing, its brand recognition is advancing and its orders pipeline is building up."

"We are extremely honored to receive the Medical Imaging Informatics Product Leadership Award from Frost & Sullivan," said Jeff Timbrook, CEO of Acuo Technologies. "This award is representative of the tremendous dedication and effort the entire Acuo team puts into helping our clients gain efficiencies and enhance patient care by taking more control of medical images and related content." 

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to a company that demonstrates product excellence in the following categories: product features and functionality, innovative elements, marketplace acceptance, customer value enhancements and product quality.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About Acuo Technologies

Acuo Technologies, with headquarters in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, was founded in 2000 with the objective of developing the first enterprise-wide collaborative Universal Clinical Platform (UCP3) solution for medical image content, both DICOM and Non-DICOM. Today, Acuo supports more than 675 implementations of UCP3 around the world.  For more information on providing superior medical image lifecycle and content management while simplifying operations and reducing costs, visit www.acuotech.com.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 40 offices on six continents. For more information on the Growth Partnership, please visit http://www.frost.com.

SOURCE Acuo Technologies