Electronic healthcare files hit the market

A spin-off IT company from London's Imperial College is about to take the world's healthcare markets by storm, claim experts.

Patient Information Folders (PIF) from com.Medica are the first electronic files to support sound, image and text - and all the legacy IT systems used by hospitals. These folders will provide a centralised record-keeping system enabling doctors to share a patient's details - such as x-rays, doctors' notes and heart rate. Such a system will cut down on mistakes and save time distributing the information.

Health IT software developers, including the UK's Medidesk, are eager to sign up. "Incorporating PIF will be our next step," said Medidesk's deputy chairman, Dr Stan Shepherd "I'll phone them as soon as I can."

The PIF are currently being tested in the department of family medicine at the University of Southern California (USC). Dr James Halls, chairman of radiology, said all their physicians were delighted with the results.

He told Silicon.com: "The problem - at USC - has been that patient information is recorded in a number of different ways, in a very diverse fashion, and accessibility to that information has been very difficult."

He continued: "The department of family medicine is a widely spread entity that works not only on the University campus but also in rural California. With this new product, we are now able to record all of our patient information centrally."

Professor Richard Kitney, who developed the technology at Imperial's Biological & Medical Systems department, said com.Medica would shortly announce its first customers in the UK, US and South East Asia.

Here in the UK, the NHS is expected to be a major client. Consultant Roger Wallhouse, CEO Health Systems Solutions, said: "This initiative definitely fits into level 6 of the government's IT strategy for the NHS - and the healthcare market desperately needs this sort of innovation."