Calgary Scientific claims its ResolutionMD Mobile diagnostic imaging app was the first of its kind to regulatory clearance for use on mobile devices, though competitor MIM Software gained Food and Drug Administration 510(k) clearance for an iPhone app in January 2011, months before ResolutionMD did the same.
ResolutionMD was the first to earn Food and Drug Administration 510(k) clearance for an Android diagnostic imaging app in April this year. GE Healthcare also has had an Android version of its Centricity Radiology Mobile Access for two years, but clearance came later.
Whether someone is first does not matter all that much when there are competitive products available, so Calgary Scientific is stepping up its game. This month, the Canadian firm released version 3.2 of its ResolutionMD system, available in both app and Web-based formats, the first update since the FDA clearance of the Android app.
ResolutionMD Mobile now has market clearance from US, Canadian and European regulators and has been validated on: Apple's iPhone 3GS, 4, 4S and 5; all generations of iPad including the iPad Mini; the Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1 Android tablet; and LG Optimus LTE Android smartphone, according to the company. It is available in 12 languages.
While 3.2 is a "point" release and not a completely overhauled system, the new version does contain a number of improvements. ResolutionMD now permits split-viewing mode on mobile devices so physicians can compare studies side-by-side, as well as retrieval of entire patient histories. "You get quick access to historical images," Calgary Scientific President and CTO Pierre Lemire told MobiHealthNews.
Version 3.2 also adds "multi-tenant support," which, according to Lemire, means organizations can manage many hospitals and imaging centers from a single server. "This is essential for a cloud deployment," he said.
In addition, the update adds support for ophthalmology and endoscopy and loads data faster than in previous releases. "We've improved the ability for the physician to start interacting with the images as soon as they come off the scanner," Lemire said.
As with earlier versions, no data is stored on tablets or smartphones as a security precaution. "We can do things very effectively without having to download any data to the devices," according to Lemire. ResolutionMD scales image quality based on bandwidth to assure fast transfers. "It works well even on 3G," Lemire said.
The ResolutionMD software interfaces directly with picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) and vendor-neutral imaging archives. Users can launch the ResolutionMD viewer in a browser directly from an electronic health record (EHR). "The EHR only has to integrate with one product," Lemire said. "We abstract the PACS from the EHR."
Lemire promised that the next release of ResolutionMD would support more collaboration among clinicians and also between clinicians and their patients. Calgary Scientific previewed some of this functionality at last year's Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting.
