ROCHESTER, N.Y., September 20 -- Eastman Kodak Company's Health Group has signed a multi-million-dollar order for its industry-leading digital medical image capture and information management solutions--and its new Business Diagnostics Services--with Erlanger Health System (Chattanooga, Tenn.)

Kodak's Business Diagnostics Services will focus on improving productivity and eliminating waste within Erlanger's medical imaging process, so that the health system can realize greater efficiencies than it could achieve by installing new technology alone.

Erlanger Health System ordered a KODAK CARESTREAM PACS for review, storage and distribution of 300,000 patient radiology imaging studies captured each year at its five hospitals and one outpatient imaging center. The healthcare provider also purchased KODAK CARESTREAM Enterprise Information Management, which will enable centralized management of images and information from radiology, cardiology and other clinical and business areas on the healthcare provider's existing IBM storage area network (SAN).

Healthcare facilities in more than 25 countries--from diagnostic imaging centers to regional healthcare networks--currently employ KODAK CARESTREAM Information Management Solutions.
As part of the agreement, Kodak will migrate images and information from an existing web server, and will integrate the new picture archiving and communications system (PACS) with both an existing radiology information system (to automate data entry for patient medical x-ray exams) as well as the hospital's centralized storage area network.

Eight KODAK DIRECTVIEW CR 950 and CR 975 Systems for digital image capture were also part of the order. Today, nearly two out of five CR systems sold in the U.S. & Canada are from Kodak's Health Group.

"Healthcare facilities are embracing the ability of our CARESTREAM Solutions to expedite connectivity to other image and information management systems. As healthcare providers begin to network clinical and business systems and establish centralized management, this capability becomes critically important to maintaining a cost-effective infrastructure," said R. L. (Vern) Davenport, Chief Operations Officer, Healthcare Information Solutions, and Vice President of Kodak's Health Group.

After reviewing proposals from 13 vendors, Kodak was selected for several compelling reasons, according to Blaine Morris, Erlanger Health Systems' Administrator of Radiology Services.

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