Fujifilm launched version 5 of its Synapse PACS in the U.S. on Thursday.

It's an enterprise imaging solution that addresses the regulatory, technological and clinical challenges health care facilities are currently facing, including bandwidth strain, reduced speed and greater overhead.

"We also understand medical facilities are merging, resulting in more desktops to manage and larger enterprises," David Wild, director of marketing, Medical Informatics at FUJIFILM Medical Systems U.S.A. Inc., told HCB News. "The investment made to advance the Synapse 5 platform is why so many new customers including some of the country's largest IDNs have recently selected our platform to replace their legacy imaging technology."

Synapse 5 is available to Fujifilm PACS customers as a software upgrade, which is included in their maintenance agreement. It features the company's latest server-side rendering architecture.

This is different from the previous version of Synapse PACS in that it's a server-side platform rather than a workstation image rendering platform.

"From increased speed to reduced bandwidth consumption, to tighter security of Protected Health Information — Synapse 5's updated architecture is the framework for advancing today's PACS to a more robust informatics system," said Wild.

Synapse 5 is ideal for enterprise imaging, according to Fujifilm. It provides sub-second, on-demand access to large datasets and the users can interact with the data in order to optimize health care delivery.

It also features improvements in efficiency and ergonomics. It's capable of server-based image rendering and is equipped with a zero-download viewer with browser flexibility.

The solution received FDA approval on February 3, 2016, but it was not commercially available until now.

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