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Candlewood Center for Women's Health in Danbury, CT, has installed a CoActiv digital image communications system to enable rapid offsite reading of its Hologic digital mammography exams.

Candlewood Center for Women's Health in Danbury, CT, has installed a CoActiv digital image communications system to enable rapid offsite reading of its Hologic digital mammography exams. Candlewood had been offering analog mammography for many years and recently upgraded to full-field digital acquisition. However, without an onsite radiologist, it had always a faced a significant challenge enabling timely exam reading and reporting.

With the analog system, Candlewood printed films and relied on couriers to transport them to and from the offices of its offsite radiology reading group, Northeast Radiology in Brewster, NY. Following the digital transition, the practice wanted to communicate images electronically for faster exam turnaround, but did not need a full PACS installation. Candlewood called on CoActiv to implement the project.

"Candlewood's goal was ambitious," according to Amy Kohn, practice manager for Northeast Radiology, which was closely involved in the workflow and infrastructure installation. "The system had to enable rapid access to large digital mammography files for Northeast's multiple offices in both New York and Connecticut."

CoActiv customized a system that met Candlewood's objectives, allowing files to be sent seamlessly to Northeast's offices, wherever needed. Kohn notes that the radiology practice's workflow is complex, with multiple imaging sites and sub-specialty radiologists. CoActiv's teleradiology system provided flexible image access to ensure prompt exam turn-around.

"A particular challenge of the project was that HIPAA regulations prohibit mammography files from being compressed at any time in the life of the study," she said. "Providing rapid transmission of image files in full fidelity was difficult for most PACS vendors, but CoActiv crafted a highly successful solution."

To accomplish this, digital files are sent from Candlewood's Hologic modality to an onsite CoActiv Acquire & Forward Server™. This server provides automatic and secure data communications over the Internet directly to a CoActiv EXAM-PACS® server at Northeast's main location. Following this, the exams automatically appear on Northeast's radiology worklists.

At the same time, all images are saved to CoActiv's EXAM-VAULT® QUAD-REDUNDANT ARCHIVING™ in four distinct instances for fail-proof disaster recovery and business continuity.

Once exams are read, reports are immediately available electronically to Candlewood and are also saved with the images to the CoActiv archiving system.

"Image communication is seamless and fast, and information has flowed flawlessly since the system was installed. Candlewood is thrilled with the results, and Northeast is so pleased that they installed Hologic digital mammography workstations at additional Northeast sites for reading the exams," comments Kohn. "They plan to expand the system shortly for use with other clients."

"Teleradiology is becoming increasingly important overall and provides a critical tool for specialized readings in today's evolving healthcare environment," said Edward Heere, President and CEO of CoActiv Medical. "As a company with its roots in IT, CoActiv is particularly adept at overcoming challenges such as the movement, management and storage of the large data sets. We are also committed to delivering the full breadth of our expertise to customize a system so that every client realizes their particular goals. Candlewood's seamless communication with its remote reading group is just one case in point."

Heere notes that incorporating this technology into Candlewood was easy because Northeast was already using the complete EXAM-PACS solution both to communicate exams among its multiple sites as well as to read exams for other radiology and orthopedic practices. "With a strong CoActiv IT backbone already in place, Candlewood was essentially an extension of a well functioning system," said Heere.