IBM and i3 ARCHIVE, Inc. have launched MyNDMA, a personal health management portal linked directly to i3's National Digital Medical Archive (NDMA).

MyNDMA allows women to take control of their health by managing their personal medical records, such as digital mammograms and diagnostic test results. In the first month, nearly 1200 women registered profiles and began managing their mammography records through MyNDMA.

Historically, records were stored in either film or digital format locally, unavailable to 'on demand' access from another facility. As a result, diagnostic tests and mammograms might be duplicated when visiting a new doctor. With a secure storage of personal mammography images and data, women can monitor their personal health and authorize 'on demand' access to their records when visiting a new doctor or obtaining a second opinion.

In a short period of time the project expanded from just four hospitals to 24 hospitals with over one million digital mammography images already stored in the NDMA database. An estimated 300 doctors and researchers have unprecedented access to patient records that promises to expedite both diagnosis and treatment.

Marisa C. Weiss, M.D., president and founder of the non-profit organization, breastcancer.org provides a valuable perspective in saying that "Women battling breast cancer typically see several different doctors through the course of their treatment. Even though digital images make storage easier, before now, there has been no easy way to transport digital images and patient data from doctor to doctor . . . .Giving these women direct access and control of their medical records isn't just convenient. It's empowering and can often be critical to the success of their treatment."

With patient consent, images and data can be made available to physicians and researchers across the country who are developing treatments and accelerated cures for breast cancer. Powered by IBM's grid computing and DB2 technology, researchers can search the archive on demand, giving them immediate access to the critical data needed to identify breast cancer patients for clinical trials in less than a day -- a process that typically would have taken months. Through their individual participation in MyNDMA, women will be helping to find a cure for breast cancer.

"Every bit of data that comes into our system -- images, reports, demographic information -- everything is cataloged, indexed and made available on demand to hospitals and radiology centers across the country using IBM's technology," said Derek Danois, president of i3 Archive. "Using powerful algorithms, this data can be analyzed to identify abnormalities in an individual patient or evaluated against a larger data set to help researchers understand common traits of the disease, hopefully leading to a cure. The reality is that the images and data submitted by women through MyNDMA will help to establish a nationwide 'best practice' benchmark for digital mammography and diagnosis."

MyNCMA is the result of a federally-funded project launched six years ago by the University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with IBM.

NDMA data is available to doctors, hospitals and radiology centers through IBM grid computing using two IBM eServer xSeries systems.

The complete article can be seen on IBM's website: MyNDMA On Demand Database helps Fight Breast Cancer

To see how the National Digital Medical Archive can benefit you, take a look at their website: myNDMA (National Digital Medical Archive)

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