AG Mednet Selected By SPARC Clinical Trial to Support and Exchange All Images for 4,000-Patient Study
BOSTON, May 7 /PRNewswire/ — AG Mednet, the world’s largest diagnostic imaging exchange network, today announced that its network is being used exclusively to securely and rapidly exchange images for a comprehensive, 40-site clinical trial measuring myocardial perfusion and coronary anatomy imaging. The Study of Myocardial Perfusion and Coronary Anatomy Imaging Roles in Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) — also known as the SPARC trial — is a wide-reaching clinical trial that will enroll approximately 3,700 patients with and without a history of CAD who are being referred for routine clinical studies to one of four noninvasive imaging arms (stress SPECT, stress PET or PET/CT, or CTA). The SPARC trial is being conducted by some of the nation’s and the world’s preeminent imaging hospitals and centers, including Brigham and Women’s, Massachusetts General Hospital, The Mayo Clinic, Mount Sinai, New York University Medical Center, Yale University, The Cleveland Clinic and The University of Florida at Jacksonville.
AG Mednet Helps SPARC Increase Efficiencies, Reduce Burdens
To ensure an efficient transfer of studies between locations and the SPARC image repository, and to minimize the burden imposed on the different participating institutions, SPARC selected AG Mednet and its diagnostic imaging exchange network to supply the study with secure and reliable transport and delivery of DICOM studies. Previously, clinical trials utilizing images as part of the study protocol relied upon traditional mail and delivery services and exchanged images using computer discs, CDs and non- DICOM file transfer protocols. This traditional approach is not only costly and labor-intensive, but can significantly delay the completion of clinical trials due to slow delivery times, human error and hardware and software incompatibilities.
“We chose AG Mednet in part because of its improved speed, efficiency, strong security model and, in particular, because it does not require any of our participating sites to add out-of-workflow steps in their everyday schedules,” said Dr. Marcelo DiCarli, Chief of Nuclear Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. “There are other key advantages that made AG Mednet the perfect choice for our trial – all SPARC studies are encrypted and secure without requiring VPNs; Installation at our trial sites was simple and seamless requiring little, if any, IT support.”
“It’s a privilege to be working with SPARC and its network of world renowned hospitals, university medical centers and investigators,” said Abraham Gutman, founder and CEO of AG Mednet. “Having already completed our deployment, SPARC sites across the U.S. and Canada are producing and exchanging significant numbers of PET/CT and CTAs with many thousands of images, ranging to more than 10,000 in a single study. We are very happy to be able to handle these transfers seamlessly and efficiently without requiring the clinical study’s participants to deviate from their daily clinical workflow and having to spend time creating and mailing CDs or using primitive file transfer methods. Our ability to support and accelerate this type of far- reaching clinical trial illustrates not only AG Mednet’s technology capabilities, but underscores our position as the world’s largest diagnostic imaging exchange network.”
About SPARC
The Study of Myocardial Perfusion and Coronary Anatomy Imaging Roles in CAD (SPARC) is a prospective, open-label, multi-center, sequentially sampled, observational study to define the clinical value of stress perfusion (stress SPECT, stress PET), noninvasive angiography (CTA) and combined perfusion- anatomy (PET/CT) studies.
About AG Mednet
AG Mednet is the world’s largest diagnostic imaging exchange network. With AG Mednet, hospitals and diagnostic imaging centers provide the highest standard of scan interpretation to referring physicians, improving patient care and service. Radiologists who want to expand their business benefit from anytime/anywhere access to flawless images. Pharmaceutical, bio-tech, device and clinical research organizations that utilize imaging technology now have an automated way to recruit imaging sites and exchange secure images, reducing time and costs. AG Mednet is headquartered in Boston and serves the global medical community. For more information call 1-888-9AGMEDNET or visit http://www.agmednet.com/ .
AG Mednet
CONTACT: Kathy Wilson, +1-781-652-0499, kwilson@tieronepr.com , orKeri Mattox, +1-215-791-0105, kmattox@tieronepr.com , both for AG Mednet
Web site: http://www.agmednet.com/