
LifeImage Inc. won a two-year federally-funded medical image-sharing contract.
The Newton, Mass.-based healthcare IT firm was selected by the Radiological Society of North America to serve as a digital "clearinghouse" for an imaging project funded by the National Institute of Health.
RSNA wants to promote standards for populating individuals’ personal health records with medical image data. The goal of the project is to allow patients to control their medical imaging files by giving them the same access and management capabilities for items such X-rays and CT scans as their bank accounts, according to LifeImage.
The parameters of the project stipulate that all image and report data from five participating medical centers flow through the LifeImage network to different PHR platforms. RSNA expects 300,000 patients to interact with the network over the project’s two-year span. The project is slated for a Jan. 2011 launch.
LifeImage also announced a collaboration with data-management company EMC Corp. (NYSE:EMC) for a pilot project to "image enable" the company’s PHRs for its employees. EMC said it was the first company to offer online PHRs to its employees and their families six years ago.
EMC is a "strategic investor" in LifeImage and has been interested in the company because of the massive amount of image data that it will potentially be storing, CFO John Reichenbach told MassDevice in September. LifeImage’s cloud-based platform aims in part to reduce orders for redundant images, which adds an additional $15 billion to the U.S.’s annual healthcare bill, CEO Hamid Tabatabaie told MassDevice.
The firm recently raised $5.2 million in a venture round and, in total, has raised about $12 million since Tabatabaie and senior vice president Amy Vreeland founded the company in 2008, including a $2.2 million round in March 2009 and another $2.2. million round in January 2010, plus angel funding raised in conjunction with the venture raises, Reichenbach said.