TORONTO/SAINT JOHN, N.B. – January 12, 2010 – AnyWare Group Inc., a provider of remote access solutions and portals for hospitals and healthcare facilities, today announced its ROAM product is an integral part of the Emergency Neurosurgery Image Transfer System (ENITS) in the Province of Ontario. AnyWare Group’s ROAM is being used by eHealth Ontario, in partnership with CritiCall Ontario and London Health Sciences Center (LHSC), as the remote access platform for the ENITS. ROAM provides neurosurgeons and CT technologists with the ability to communicate and consult remotely between hospitals throughout Ontario, thereby reducing the need for unnecessary hospital transfers while improving patient care.
According to eHealth Ontario, the agency met significant milestones in 2009 including “enabl[ing] neurosurgeons to remotely review head trauma images to make critical decisions about patients in local emergency rooms — saving lives, lessening family distress and avoiding costly transfers.”(1). Neurosurgeons are notified about neurosurgical patients requiring consultations in distant facilities by CritiCall, a 24-hour emergency referral service for hospital-based Ontario physicians. Neurosurgeons can then use AnyWare Group’s ROAM to access the image repository, review images and provide consultation for treatment, and/or patient transfer. When imaging is made available to the consulting neurosurgeon, 30 to 50 per cent of patient transfers can be prevented, resulting in savings of approximately $9 million while ensuring timely patient care(2)
“AnyWare Group has been enabling hospitals to make PACS images available to remote consulting specialists via ROAM for years. The entire team at AnyWare Group takes great pride in being part of another high profile project that reduces wait times and improves the quality of care for residents of Ontario,” said Robert Lalonde, AnyWare Group CEO. “Soon, any health care facility in Ontario with a CT scanner — no matter how small or remote — will be able to receive emergency neurological consultations with ENITS.”
ROAM provides CritiCall with the scalable, clientless remote access solution required to meet the unique deployment challenges of a province-wide system. ENITS also leverages ROAM’s Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities to reduce log-in times and support calls. ROAM’s design will also allow the province to quickly expand ENITS into other imaging-related programs.
