Eastman Kodak Company's Health Group has been selected as the main partner of the RATU e-health project in Northern Finland. The RATU project is a pilot project for the country, aimed at creating a total solution for the five hospital districts for the production, processing and archiving of patient information. All the Northern region's image, biosignal and text data of patients is stored in a central archive. This, in turn, is a step towards a national Finnish patient record archive. Kodak is the software and systems delivery partner of the project, and systems integration is carried out by Finnish IT company, Mawell Ltd.

With the RATU project, the hospital districts' appointment bookings, consultations and x-rays can be transferred using a centralized system. The first phase of the project is to be completed during the first quarter of 2006, when the Northern region's central hospitals and four pilot healthcare centers will be connected. With the system, the central hospitals and later all healthcare centers will be able to store, download and view patient images from any location. The Lausuntotori portal makes it possible to carry out consultations over the Internet, providing a forum for all specialists in the region to view and consult patient images.

"Kodak's role as the RATU main partner is total system integration, administration and maintenance - including all data center components, servers and software," says RATU Project Manager Kari Alatalo.