Cloud-based medical image exchange company NucleusHealth has landed an undisclosed “strategic investment” from Mercy Health, an Ohio–based health care system that is now a minority investor in the San Diego, Calif.-based company.
NucleusHealth will use the money to help deliver Nucleus.io, the first cloud-based Picture Archiving Communications System (PACS) platform designed to use the security, scalability and cost efficiencies of the public cloud. Nucleus.io’s platform is comprised of modular solutions in a web browser to provide image exchange, diagnostic and clinical viewing, archiving and a platform-as-a-service for enabling medical software applications.
Mercy Health contracted with NucleusHealth to transition its hospitals from an antiquated CD-burning system to an intuitive cloud-based solution that immediately provided cost and time savings along with increased patient satisfaction, according to a NucleusHealth statement. The transition took 90 days and landed both organizations the Microsoft Innovation Award in March at the Healthcare Information and Management System Society conference. Nucleus.io uses the Microsoft Azure cloud.
“We immediately saw the value of the NucleusHealth technology on our clinical workflows when we rolled-out its first-generation image exchange solution to our 23 hospitals,” said Mike Hibbard, Mercy Health vice president of IT, applications and service delivery, in a statement from the health system. “The technology is cost-effective and helps us meet patient and provider requests for imaging quickly and efficiently.”
Nucleus.io uses client-side rendering paired with proprietary adaptive streaming protocols to bypass latency issues currently experienced with other cloud solutions, according to NucleusHealth. This approach allows for the viewing of large medical images in a browser with the same performance as on-premise workstations.
NucleusHealth will continue to operate as a fully independent company but will work closely with Mercy Health to develop the features and workflows necessary for an efficient and secure system-wide deployment of the NucleusHealth browser-based radiology workstation, Microsoft Azure-based cloud storage & processing, and complete medical image management solutions.
