Proprietary Technologies Developed for the Medical Software Development Community

A sizeable range of proprietary software modules have been developed that have, until now, been exclusively included within a variety of internal libraries and utilities, and thus not available for general use by other members of the development community.

Merge Healthcare (Milwaukee, WI, USA), a leading health information technology (IT) solutions provider, announced that it would make its extensive suite of internal technologies available to the general software development market. "Our engineering team is constantly asked to meet significant technical challenges,” explained Peter Bascom, senior vice president of product development at Merge OEM (original equipment manufacturer). "As we solve these problems for specific applications, we can now retain and productize the solutions to help the broader development market. Our first entrée into this took a series of technologies in X-ray that solves image quality, dose measurement, image stitching, shutter removal, and quality control issues; and combined them into one toolkit called Cedara xPipe. We released this specialty toolkit to speed development and improve the quality of console applications."

CPI (Palo Alto, CA, USA), the largest independent supplier of radiographic and fluoroscopic X-ray generators, has used Cedara xPipe in the development of their Rad Vision console application. "This is our first successful software console development,” says Mike Boyle, vice president of CPI Power Electronics Business. "Merge OEM was able to offer us solutions to the trickier image processing and image manipulation portions of the CPI RAD Vision package. CPI was then able to integrate quickly the Merge OEM solutions to develop a fully integrated package including the interface to our generators. Our customers are now able to see the benefits of this leading edge technology.”

Merge already has a significant following for its MergeCOM-3 Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) toolkit, which provides the basic standards and libraries needed for medical imaging software development. In addition to Cedara xPipe, Merge has released a toolkit focused on tumor tracking, and looks forward to continuing to keep the technologies flowing from its proprietary "vault.”

"This is truly like unlocking the candy store for imaging software developers,” says Justin Dearborn, CEO of Merge Healthcare. "Customers know we are the ones to ask about imaging's more difficult technical problems, and they have been waiting for this access. Distributing these technologies to the larger community is worth the investment because it can raise the quality and speed of imaging application development overall.”

Merge Healthcare develops systems that automate healthcare data and diagnostic workflow to enable a better electronic record of the patient experience, and to enhance product development for health IT, device and pharmaceutical companies. Merge products, ranging from standards-based development toolkits to sophisticated clinical applications, have been used by healthcare providers, vendors, and researchers worldwide.

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