Siemen Healthineers is now offering a wider array of applications and services on its Digital Ecosystem platform thanks to the establishment of six new partnerships.

The collaborations, announced at the HIMSS 2018 in Las Vegas, provides access to software, analytics tools, and AI and cloud-based solutions, enabling users to derive more insights from shared health care data and apply them toward the improvement of advanced imaging, laboratory and value-based health care performances.

“They are close to imaging and radiology. That’s a good starting point because it’s complementary to what we do on the hardware side,” Tina Johne, head of marketing, Siemens Healthineers Digital Ecosystem, told HCB News. “What they do is to help to make better use of the data, in this case clinical images, and help physicians get more out of that clinical imagery.”

Introduced as a prototype at last year's HIMSS meeting, Digital Ecosystem is a secure and open platform offering a wide range of digital solutions and services produced by Siemens Healthineers and its partners. Users across the world can connect and share knowledge with one another to further improve practices.

The first partners to sign on to Digital Ecosystem included Arterys, HeartFlow, mediCAD Web and Stroll Health.

Here is a brief overview of this year’s new partners and the innovations they have to offer to the imaging sphere:

Amra Medical

Swedish in origin, Amra Medical is the first international digital health company in the world to transform images of rapid, six-minute whole body MR scans into 3-D volumetric muscle measurements.

These measurements further enhance accuracy and precision in lean tissue change assessments as well as muscle fat infiltration and metabolic status.

It also offers a cloud-based analysis service, AMRA Profiler Research, which produces automated insights that have enabled improvements in pharmaceutical and academic R&D settings, and will soon be available in clinical practice as well.

Circle Cardiovascular Imaging Inc.

Users of Digital Ecosystem will soon have access to MR and CT image analysis, equipped with full DICOM and PACS connectivity, thanks to cvi42, a cardiovascular post-processing software developed by the Alberta-based enterprise.

The solution comes with a wide range of features that include the ability to calculate LV function with bi/triplanar, long axis and short axis approaches; 3-D and 4-D data analysis in imaging, such as MR and CT angiography; and the viewing, creating and editing of vessel segmentations and labels with windows analysis for lumen measurements and coronary artery or valve stenosis assessment.

Circle’s partnership is for local installation within Siemens’ syngo.via advanced image reading solution.

Combinostics

Combinostics’ CNeuro MR application enables physicians to use MR images as a form of measurement of brain structures in the early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.

The cloud-based platform is available in two modules: cMRI, which quantifies volumes of 133 brain regions, lumen measurements and coronary artery or valve stenosis assessment; and cDSI which compares neuropsychology, MR, CSF and genetics measured from patients to data from previously diagnosed cases.

Cranberry Peak

Cranberry Peak’s ezCDS application offers additional clinical decision support in the form of a patent pending AI assistant that provides easy compliance for PAMA/MACRA mandates.

The solution is equipped with multilingual voice and conversational interface, enabling physicians to spend less time at the computer and devote more of it to patients.

Precision Imaging Analysis

Precision Imaging Analysis offers a cloud-based, advanced medical imaging post-processing and analysis service, equipped with an on-demand, post-processing expert.

This eliminates the need for clients to train personnel and invest in costly software and capital, with analyses returned upon completion and auto-appended to original patient studies on USER PACS to allow physicians to make final diagnostic interpretations.

XIFIN

XIFIN is the first partner to offer clinical laboratory solutions to users of Digital Ecosystem.

One such product is its flagship cloud-based Revenue Cycle Management solution which maximizes efficiency, improves cash collection and provides financially accurate and actionable business intelligence to further financial performance in the laboratory.

XIFIN solutions will be sold in the U.S.

Johne says these collaborations are just the beginning for Digital Ecosystem, with plans to eventually team up with a greater diversity of partners outside its current areas of interest.

“The intention is not to keep it to partners that are close to our current business, but over time to also build on adjacent areas that may not be as close right now. The intention is to make better use of data, help to create excellent insights. That can happen to our core business as well as other areas in health care.”