Confirma and GE Healthcare Expand Partnership to Provide Breast MRI System

Confirma (Bellevue, WA, USA), a developer of application-specific computer-assisted detection (CAD) systems for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), recently announced that Confirma and GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK), a global leader in medical imaging and information systems, have expanded their strategic partnership to offer Confirma service to GE Healthcare customers with the CADstream system.

Under the new agreement, Confirma will offer program consultation, experienced applications training, customizable educational courses, and marketing and reimbursement consultation to GE Healthcare customers with the CADstream system, the standard in CAD for breast MRI.

Since July 2004, Confirma and GE Healthcare have partnered to bring leading MRI technologies for breast cancer detection to healthcare providers. Under the agreement, GE Healthcare will continue to distribute CADstream to its MRI customers while Confirma will install, train, and support CADstream. The expanded relationship marks significant progress in their mutual goal to advance MRI technology for breast cancer detection. Currently, over 200 CADstream systems have been installed at GE Healthcare customer sites worldwide.

Confirma's customer service team provides consultation for early and advanced breast MRI programs. Moreover, Confirma's customer support team provides comprehensive training at the customer's site. Using remote technology, Confirma's customer service team can instantly access CADstream systems for service and updates. Confirma expert support is available via telephone 24 hours per day. Confirma also supports a variety of Continuing Medical Education- (CME)-accredited breast MRI with CAD educational programs, including didactic and hands-on courses, online case reviews and fellowships led by experienced faculty.

Confirma and CADstream help imaging centers improve confidence in MRI and meet the rapidly increasing demand for MRI studies. Recently-published clinical studies support breast MRI for improved breast cancer detection, and in March 2007, the American Cancer Society started recommending that women with a 20-25% or greater lifetime risk of breast cancer undergo an annual MRI in addition to mammography.

It is becoming increasingly important to improve the analysis of these complex, time-consuming studies. CADstream is advancing breast MRI by improving efficiency of study interpretation and reporting. CADstream was first introduced in 2002 and is currently in use by thousands of physicians at hundreds of breast MRI programs worldwide. The July 2007 issue of Radiology published research from the University of Washington (Seattle, USA) and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance indicating that CAD for breast MRI may improve standardization, as well as the analysis of benign and malignant lesions. CADstream was the only CAD system used in this study.


Related Links:
Confirma
GE Healthcare