Cloud infrastructure firm VMware is backing a new approach to medical care that promises to cut the cost of sending medical images, and increase the number of devices capable of accessing the snaps.
The virtualization firm has teamed with Intel and Peake Healthcare – a joint venture between Harris Corporation and Johns Hopkins Medicine – to develop a secure cloud platform for medical imaging delivery. Peake claims cloud computing cuts the overall cost of ownership compared to regular ‘on premise’ image delivery, by aggregating records in, and between, health care facilities.
Frank Nydam, senior director of healthcare at VMware, says the cloud-based approach also boosts overall medical care. "The medical imaging cloud is an ideal application for virtualization and cloud infrastructure technology because it can improve the quality of patient care by enabling physicians to review patient images in a collaborative, secure environment.”
Intel’s involvement in the project covers virtualization of the medical images. The chip firm has also enhanced the architecture of its Xeon processor and software optimization, to enable different generations of servers to be managed from a single infrastructure resource pool.