Healthcare facilities based in shopping malls, strip malls, in-stores and other commercial outlets seem to be all the rage now, offering a new wrinkle in the lexicon of outpatient care, sometimes called “urgent care.” These facilities, which are commonly called urgent care centers or clinics or walk-in clinics, are represented by The National Urgent Care Center Association (www.ucaoa.org) and the National Association for Ambulatory Care (www.urgentcare.org).

Most of the nine million people who fall ill with tuberculosis each year lack access to adequate testing and diagnosis, complicating efforts to stop its spread, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

The United Nations agency said big investments are needed to develop diagnostics in low- and middle-income countries, where three quarters of screenings are performed for this bacterial disease, which claims 1.7 million lives a year.

Canon U.S.A. Inc. has yesterday introduced the DR-4010C scanner, the latest addition to the company’s DR scanner line. The scanner can provide color scanning up to 40 pages per minute (ppm) and 80 images per minute (ipm), which makes it useful in healthcare environments. The DR-4010C boasts a number of new features such as automatic detection of color or black-and-white document scans, the ability to handle a wider range of documents, as well as black-and-white contrast enhancement for improved low contrast document imaging.

The world market for medical ultrasound systems is expected to continue its current growth spurt, growing from $3.97 billion this year to more than $4.5 billion by 2010.

Siemens Medical Solutions announced today that the FDA has approved premarket approval (PMA) application for its syngo Lung computer-aided detection (CAD) software, which is designed to assist radiologists in the detection of solid lung nodules in computed tomography (CT) examinations of the chest.

According to findings in the American Medical Group Association’s (AMGAs) 2006 Medical Group Compensation & Financial Survey, most specialties saw modest increases in compensation in 2005. In 2005, 89 percent of the specialties experienced increases in compensation, with the overall average increase around 6 percent. The primary care specialties saw about an 8 percent increase in 2005, while other medical and surgical specialties averaged around 6 percent and 5 percent increases, respectively.

Community-based oncologists support Pay for Performance (P4P) initiatives and are well positioned to participate in these evidence-based treatment programs, according to a new national survey. With the adoption of technology that is required to collect data and generate outcomes, oncologists are willing to embrace new P4P programs.

Radiologists have developed a remote-control mechanism that allows an experienced off-site operator to control a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine by logging onto the Internet from a personal computer. The quality of the images from remote-control scanning was found to be superior to images obtained by a less-experienced technologist onsite. The technique is outlined in the November issue of Radiology.

GE Healthcare announced today the introduction of a new ultrasound imaging system, Voluson E8, with CAD and 4-D imaging for women’s healthcare, extending GE's Voluson ultrasound platform.
Voluson E8 includes SonoVCAD (Sonography based Volume Computer Aided Diagnosis), a new automated imaging tool designed to improve workflow by making it easier to acquire volume images of the fetal heart. This technology displays all of the 2-D planes and includes identification of the 4-chamber, left outflow tract and right outflow tract view of the fetal heart.

Agfa HealthCare announced yesterday that it has signed a multimillion dollar deal with Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston, WV, a 260-bed facility that provides a complete RIS/PACS/Reporting and CR solution. The installation includes Agfa HealthCare’s IMPAX 6.0 PACS and the newest version of the company’s reporting solution, TalkStation 3.1. It also includes six DX-S CR systems, which feature Agfa’s DirectriX needle-based detector technology and Scanhead line-to-line CR stimulation and light collection technology.

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