Heart IT lands $2.25M NIH grant to bring medical imaging to the cloud

Health IT company Heart Imaging Technologies is partnering with Johns Hopkins University on a project that could equip a small physician’s practice with the same medical imaging capabilities as the largest hospitals.

The Nationwide Health Information Network, created by the federal HITECH Act, aims to develop ways to securely exchange health information over the Internet. The goal is to allow health information to follow patients wherever they are, supporting their doctors’ abilities to make informed medical decisions. Heart IT has been awarded a $2.25 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a prototype technology that can share medical images over the network and the Durham, North Carolina-based company will collaborate with Johns Hopkins Medicine on the project.

Medical imaging is typically managed in hospitals by a Picture Archiving Communication Systems, or PACS. But according to the Government Accountability Office, 75 percent of all imaging procedures are performed outside of hospitals at smaller facilities that do not have PACS.

Heart IT’s technology could enable smaller facilities to share medical images without a PACS. The company’s product, WebPAX, brings medical imaging into the cloud. WebPAX received U.S. Food and Drug Administration 510(k) clearance in 2005 for viewing images and making geometric measurements on medical images over the Internet. The system allows medical professionals to manage medical images via a Web browser. Heart IT says its technology could be a solution for smaller healthcare providers who don’t have a PACS but still need to share and access images on the National Health Information Network.

Heart IT’s technology is currently used by healthcare systems, large hospitals and private clinics. The company has also developed systems that can be used by pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies to manage multicenter clinical trials. Heart IT claims that its systems currently provide secure access via the Internet to more than 1 billion medical images.