Eastman Kodak Company and IBM will offer health care facilities solutions that combine Kodak's medical imaging products and services such as enterprise archiving and picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) with IBM's storage devices. This open, flexible software and hardware combination can help medical professionals reduce cost and improve patient care by allowing them to store, retrieve and share large amounts of data across their enterprise.

"By working with IBM, we can provide Kodak customers with a more extensive range of outstanding storage solutions when evaluating the benefits of PACS to help meet their current and future imaging and information needs," said Candy M Obourn, chief operating officer for Kodak's Health Imaging Group.

IBM will supply storage infrastructure that powers Kodak's medical imaging systems to help manage and store large volumes of patient images and accompanying information.

"The challenge is storing and accessing images for radiologists and doctors with greater speed and reliability," said Patrick Boyle, medical imaging segment executive, IBM Life Sciences. "With IBM's proven storage capabilities and Kodak's imaging expertise, Kodak's solution is providing doctors on-demand access to medical images which can ultimately improve the quality of patient care."

Kodak has worked collaboratively with IBM to certify and test IBM' Total Storage Enterprise Storage Systems with its PACS as well as other healthcare information technology (IT) applications. Kodak can now also offer to integrate Kodak medical imaging products into a customer's existing infrastructure to help lower total cost of ownership and improve performance.

Kodak will integrate IBM's Total Storage products with Kodak Directview Versatile Intelligent Patient Archive (VIParchive) software to provide enterprise-wide management of images and information across multiple storage devices and locations. The data management capabilities of the VIParchive extend Kodak's portfolio beyond radiology and into the healthcare IT market. With this solution, IT managers may be able to leverage shared storage systems across multiple applications ranging from radiology to cardiology, purchasing, inventory, payroll and other departmental functions.

Kodak's newest PACS platform, the Kodak Directview Pacs System 5, is a Web-enabled, image-and-information management system that allows radiology departments to manage and store large volumes of patient medical images (such as x-rays, CT scans and MRI images) and accompanying information. This open system also makes it possible to send medical images from one destination to another electronically - securely via the Internet - thus facilitating communications between radiologists and referring physicians.

Kodak's medical imaging solutions will interoperate with IBM's comprehensive storage technology, including IBM TotalStorage FAStT storage server and TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server. In preparation for integrating with IBM storage products as part of a Kodak PACS solution, Kodak's sales specialists have received specialized training in IBM's storage products and systems.