April 16, 2012 - Prime Healthcare Services (PHS), a hospital management company based in Ontario, Calif., currently owns and operates 16 acute-care hospitals. In February 2012, PHS signed a master agreement with Infinitt North America to replace PACS and cardiology PACS at several of its California hospitals.

April 16, 2012 — Philips Healthcare announced it is collaborating with Brainlab AG to create a comprehensive intra-operative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) solution with the goal of streamlining neurosurgery procedures. Ingenia MR-OR is based on Philips’ digital broadband Ingenia MRI system, 1.5T and 3.0T, and is designed to be combined with Brainlab’s integrated operating room (OR) solutions.

April 12, 2012 — Several innovative cardiovascular and radiology technologies were featured in Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry (MD+DI) magazine’s April issue, which also announced the finalists in the 2012 Medical Design Excellence Awards (MDEA) competition.

Philips Healthcare recently installed an Allura Xper FD 20/20 biplane angiography X-ray system at Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City, with a National Basketball Association (NBA) theme to put children at ease prior to and during interventional radiology procedures.

April 12, 2012 - Edwards Lifesciences Corp. said a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel will review the company's request to expand the indication for the Sapien transcatheter aortic valve to high-risk surgical patients. The premarket approval (PMA) application is set to be reviewed June 13, 2012. Edwards submitted a PMA application in April 2011 based on data from the high-risk cohort (Cohort A) of the PARTNER Trial, for approval of this therapy in the treatment of patients with severe, symptomatic aortic stenosis who are at high risk for surgery.

April 12, 2012 — The Maryland General Assembly set a high bar for the nation and showed its commitment to patients by passing legislation establishing an independent review of the placement of stents in heart patients to ensure consistency with guidelines developed by the American College of Cardiology and other organizations, the Maryland Chapter of the American College of Cardiology said.

Accustomed to paper-based workflow processes and legacy single-modality solutions, most cardiology departments lag several years behind radiology in their adoption of cardiovascular image and information management systems (CIIMS). After providers have met the requirements for the first stages of meaningful use through their electronic medical record (EMR) implementation, the CIIMS market will likely start to benefit from IT stimulus funding starting in 2014.