During the upcoming HIMSS ’09 Annual Conference and Exhibition, DR Systems will exhibit:

• Operation of the Unity RIS/PACS in a virtualized server environment.
• The advanced DICOM connectivity of its Unity™ RIS/PACS
• The Unity RIS/PACS’ cross-platform capability
• The company’s new ZDA (Zero-Download Ambassador), Web browser-based clinical review application

DR Systems will be in Booth 7645 during the meeting, which runs from April 4-8 at the McCormick Place in Chicago.

Server virtualization from DR Systems reduces hardware costs, operating costs, and service interruptions. It enables institutions to use fewer servers for their various applications, instead of having each application run on its own dedicated server. It also allows radiology departments to continue with full functionality during planned downtimes, and offers enhanced business continuity for unplanned infrastructure downtimes.

Institutions using virtualization technology can also maintain a greener profile because they consume far less electrical power for their servers. Without virtualization, a hospital might be running several servers 24 hours per day for applications that are used only occasionally. Virtualization eliminates this wasteful, expensive scenario.

DR Systems’ virtualization offerings utilize award-winning technology from VMware (Palo Alto, Calif.) The demonstration at HIMSS will include virtual servers running on both Windows Server 2003 64-bit and Windows Server 2008 64-bit operating systems.

Unity Platform DICOM connectivity enables the RIS/PACS to interchange DICOM images with systems by other manufacturers and display those images with a high degree of functionality. The Unity tools make DICOM images more usable to technologists and reading radiologists than standard DICOM data would otherwise allow. DICOM is a native image format in the Unity RIS/PACS Platform.

The company will soon offer the capability of indicating whether exams transferred from a third-party PACS have been read. It also expects to be able to transfer exam reports to a third-party PACS.

The new “ultra-thin client”, Zero Download Ambassador provides significant advantages for institutions already using DR Systems’ Web Ambassador software. Web Ambassador enables referring doctors and other clinicians to view exams and reports remotely from their home or office computers, or while traveling. With the new ZDA, clinicians no longer have to download the software before accessing reports and exams on their own computers.

The Zero Download Ambassador application is cross-platform capable and will be demonstrated at HIMSS running on both Apple and Linux operating systems.

Also at HIMSS, DR Systems will be exhibiting its Release 8.2 software for its Unity™ RIS/PACS platform. Innovations in Release 8.2 include:

• DICOM Structured Reports: Automatically captures DICOM data such as ultrasound measurements from the modality and transfers it to the exam report, increasing the radiologist's accuracy and saving time for the technologist.
• CS Series Workstation: Provides sites with the ability to use the full range of Unity RIS/PACS software features on client-supplied hardware.
• Unity access via enterprise-based and physician office EMRs (electronic medical records). Accessing through a Web browser to the EMR allows for clinical review of exam reports, images, and voice clips along with other patient information.
• Multiple Volume Support. This capability provides greater system scalability while increasing data safety, configuration flexibility, and system availability.
• Improved Sentinel Capabilities: Sentinel monitors the real-time performance of the RIS/PACS application as well as workflow activities. Among several other new capabilities, Sentinel can be used to send e-mail alerts when the status of the site changes.

Finally, DR Systems will be exhibiting Web-based imaging informatics at HIMSS. The Unity enterprise imaging and information management system will be demonstrated operating in an HTTP communication protocol environment.