Eastman Kodak Company and Front Porch Digital Inc have announced an agreement in New York, where Kodak will purchase exclusive rights to Front Porch Digital's DIVArchive software for use in the medical imaging and information field. Front Porch will retain all rights to DIVArchive outside the medical field and will continue to offer the product to the broadcast industry and other market segments.

This is a strategic move for both companies. Kodak's Health Imaging Group will benefit, since it has pinpointed archiving middleware like DIVA Medical Software as a building block in its Healthcare Information Systems strategy. Such software enables one information-technology (IT) system to manage the content of other systems to which it is linked.

Front Porch Digital will benefit, since it can reinvest the proceeds of the sale -$850,000 - in its remaining DIVA business. "We now have increased funding to accelerate our penetration of the broadcast market, particularly in the United States, and to develop new market segments, as well," said Michael Knaisch, Chief Operating Officer of Front Porch Digital.

In relation to the agreement between the two companies, the DIVA Medical Software development team in Toulouse, France, will join Kodak and become part of the HealthImaging Group. The team will continue to support and enhance current DIVA Medical Software offerings, as well as develop new intelligent archiving products for the medical market. Also joining Kodak's Health Imaging Group are selected Front Porch employees who focus on sales and customer support of DIVA Medical Software.

Kodak's Health Imaging Group will offer the software as a stand-alone product or in combination with its picture archiving and communications systems (PACS), which medical institutions use to manage, share and store medical images and information. In Europe, Kodak has been offering DIVA Medical Software to its PACS customers through a relationship Kodak and Front Porch forged more than a year ago.

DIVA Medical Software, developed expressly for medical applications, offers scalable, secure archive management with flexibility for capacity increases, geographical distribution of content - and more.

As "middleware," DIVA Medical Software will enable Kodak PACS systems to tie into any digital storage system in a hospital enterprise and to intelligently manage content.