Hospital Management

Daily Newsletter

09 August 2023

Daily Newsletter

Princeton, New Jersey-based health technology service provider CitiusTech in the US has partnered with Radical Imaging, a medical imaging-focused software firm, to support development projects built on the open-source web imaging platform of Open Health Imaging Foundation (OHIF).

This imaging foundation was launched via a collaboration between the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Department of Radiology and Radical Imaging in 2015 to create a web-based, open-source medical imaging platform.

The partnership brings together MGH's project management, user experience design and product testing experience with Radical Imaging's software development and system design expertise.

Under this partnership, CitiusTech will deliver a scalable image ingestion solution with zero footprints to support the seamless uploading of medical imaging data, including Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and non-DICOM formats.

Furthermore, as this system can be customised to align with current workflows, it enables easy integration with the infrastructure of a healthcare organisation.

Radical Imaging will tap the software developer team of CitiusTech to offer its clients resources to develop and maintain medical imaging viewers and workflows in the cloud.

It has been challenging to source sufficient software developers holding medical imaging expertise for projects of large scale.

According to Radical Imaging, it will be able to commit to new medical imaging software development projects with the help of CitiusTech.

Radical Imaging CEO Rob Lewis said: “CitiusTech will provide us with software development capacity at scale, which will enable us to take on more and larger projects.

“Before our partnership with CitiusTech, we struggled to find enough medical imaging software developers to staff the projects that were coming our way and it inhibited our growth as a company.

“Now, we will be able to satisfy the staffing requirements that are necessary for us to take on the largest medical imaging software projects.”

Healthcare companies are hesitant to invest in the metaverse

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the healthcare industry to rapid digitalization. Increased use of telehealth, telepresence systems, remote diagnostics, predictive AI, and wearable technology is changing how healthcare is delivered and improving patient outcomes. Emerging technologies such as AR and VR are becoming increasingly routine for professional training, surgical assistance, and treatment of psychological and neurological disorders. In the pharma and medical devices industries, AR, VR, and AI are rapidly accelerating drug discovery and manufacturing and generating supply chain efficiencies. New digital opportunities will look to build upon disruptive technologies. However, affordability is a limiting factor to widespread adoption. Per GlobalData estimates, the metaverse market is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 33% between 2023 and 2030. Although metaverse technologies could reinvent healthcare approaches and bring new experiences to healthcare providers and patients, adoption is still at an early stage. There are currently few use cases in the healthcare industry. The metaverse needs to overcome major challenges for healthcare, including regulation and data privacy concerns. Evidence of proven use cases and participation by a critical mass of users are imperative to drive a shift in metaverse investment.