Kodak to offer telemedicine systems

Kodak to offer telemedicine systems

The telemedicine market has largely been ignored by major PACS vendors. That may change following Eastman Kodak's decision to form a strategic alliance with videoconferencing and communications company Smith Micro Software. Under the three-year agreement, Kodak's Health Imaging division and Smith Micro will work together to develop advanced video technologies for healthcare applications.

The joint effort won't be the first involvement of Smith Micro in the telemedicine market. It has participated in the sector for the last 18 months with its VideoLink videoconferencing technology.

A number of test sites have been set up, which are primarily employing the technology for use in home health applications, said Bruce Quigley, director of business development for Smith Micro, based in Aliso Viejo, CA.

The VideoLink offering provides true videoconferencing capabilities over plain old telephone lines (POTS) and is compatible with the h.324 standard, Quigley said. It provides point-to-point videoconferencing and also comes with high-resolution capture capability, which allows medical images to be captured and forwarded to another location while the videoconference is under way. In addition, ViewLink can support annotation, Quigley said.

A customized version of ViewLink will be built for Kodak, although it's too early to speculate about a timeline for product commercialization, he said.

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