CHICAGO — Apollo Enterprise Imaging Corp presented a preview of the upcoming version of its enterprise imaging solution, arcc, last week at the 2017 Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Version 10 of the autonomous repository for clinical content is equipped with features that enable the implementation of imaging capture modalities, such as vendor-neutral archives and PACS, and capabilities that extend the solution beyond its role as a clinical tool to one that meets medical imaging needs across the entire health care continuum.

“People used to think of us as a pathology solution or clinical management solution but not a radiology solution or what people consider to be medical imaging,” Mark Newburger, president and CEO of Apollo,” told HCB News. “We wanted people to understand that in fact we can cover all that, including the vendor neutral archive.”

Version 9.5, the most current model of arcc, manages information from a clinical standpoint as well as clinical workflow and multiple specialties across the enterprise, such as dermatology or pathology.

The new version is a VNA at its core with a series of modules built on top of that platform that allow for the implementation of PACS, clinical imaging and cardiovascular imaging, as well as other aspects of system setup such as storage, security infrastructure, departments, or users, and their full access rights.

The solution is also equipped with AI capabilities, making it autonomous and reducing the complexity of IT management and setup, and offers DICOM and non-DICOM capabilities for managing unstructured data. It unifies patient health records to work in conjunction with the existing electronic medical records of a health system, enabling longitudal views of a patient’s medical history and treatment plans.

Other enhancements include a physician connect module that enables health information exchange and interoperability with other clinical systems; enterprise viewing; and the use of smartphones and tablets as secure and mobile capture devices for linking into the health system with a full audit trail for monitoring where and when additional storage is required.

Version 10 enhances the scalability of arcc, offering support from large providers to single physician practices, and can enable better utilization of resources for cost savings, and valuable use by tracking the amount available.

Cloud capabilities will also be introduced to enable the implementation of arcc without having to be on-premise at client sites, along with more machine learning capabilities.

“The cloud is a way for us to implement on our own infrastructure - we’re partnering with someone to provide us that - so that we can offer it to small and medium-sized health organizations that don’t have the resources to build the infrastructure that you need in order to support an imaging solution that’s as powerful as arcc,” Newburger told HCB News. “We’ll also be focusing a lot on machine learning and algorithms that are actually analyzing the images. Our strategy is to add those machine learning algorithms on to our platform from third-party providers.”

Those with current contracted versions of arcc will be able to upgrade to version 10.

A release date is planned for sometime at the end of the first quarter of 2018.

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