The Stimuplex HNS12 peripheral nerve stimulator offers clinicians a high degree of current delivery accuracy, especially at low current output in close proximity to the target nerve, enhancing peripheral nerve block success.
Its larger display also provides more information to the anesthesia provider regarding the condition of current being delivered to the patient and the quality of the motor twitches they elicit. This increases procedural efficiency and accuracy.

The Continuum MR Infusion System can now be used in magnetic resonance (MR) environments through 3.0 Tesla (T), enabling clinicians working in the latest 3.0T environments to infuse medications, sedatives and other drugs while benefiting from the system’s ease-of-use and dose enhancements.
Continuum provides an expanded set of measurements so clinicians can work with a larger selection of medications, sedatives and anesthetic agents.


Mechanical ventilation has a weighty presence in this issue — we offer our annual ventilator comparison chart as well as professional insights about advanced ventilator features in a physician-authored article beginning on page 28. Many thanks to this magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board member Dr. Girish Joshi at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and his colleagues for their important contribution.



Acuity Care Technology (ACT): Are there any new changes to the overall meeting this year?


Agfa Healthcare announced yesterday that it will install its speech recognition system, TalkStation, in more than 45 hospitals run by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), as part of VA’s strategy to decrease report turnaround time and improve quality of care.

The installation will include TalkStation 3.1, which has been validated to work with the VistA information system that is used at every VA Hospital. Each hospital is expected to be running TalkStation 3.1 by early 2007.

NASA Cardiovascular Laboratory researchers are measuring the loss of heart mass in Space Shuttle astronauts brought on by the most recent space flight, using 3-D ultrasound, a iE33 echocardiography system and QLAB Quantification software, developed by Philips Medical Systems, as part of an ongoing study on heart mass reduction during prolonged space flight.

Suros Surgical Systems Inc., a Hologic company, has gained city-wide adoption of its minimally invasive breast biopsy system with nearly all hospitals and breast centers in Indianapolis now using the one-minute biopsy system. The Suros ATEC Breast Biopsy and Excision System is used for breast biopsy guided by x-ray or mammography and is a leading device used for MRI-guided breast biopsy worldwide.
The ATEC system can be used with the three most common breast imaging modalities – stereotactic X-ray, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Jan. 8, 2007 - Kindred Healthcare Inc., which operates 80 long-term acute care hospitals across the U.S., has selected Neurostar Solutions’ Virtual Radiology Network (VRN) for teleradiology and imaging archiving for their interim teleradiology solution. The Neurostar VRN application downloads as a thin client from an offsite Neurostar server and can be set up at a site in less than a day.

Philips Medical Systems and Texas Healthcare Network Inc. (THN) have entered into a joint agreement that provides rural community hospitals and clinics with the Philips iSite PACS. THN will jointly train, install and support their healthcare customers on PACS and work with Philips to maintain the most current level of system functionality and operations. Philips will provide all the latest enhancements and support to THN and their members.

A new study by IMV Medical Information Division reports that approximately one-third of the hospitals have at least one digital radiography (DR) system in their x-ray department, however, over half have adopted computed radiography (CR) technology.
The survey involved 4,860 hospital sites and recorded that 16,510 units in these hospitals comprised both conventional x-ray and digital radiography (DR) units. However, 50 percent of the hospitals reported having a CR system installed.

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