IBM, i3 Archive provide broad access to digital mammo archive
IBM and i3 ARCHIVE Inc. announced last week the launch of MyNDMA, a personal health management portal linked directly to i3's National Digital Medical Archive (NDMA) - a large archive of digital mammography images and related data which women worldwide will be able to access. The NDMA uses IBM technology as the base of its system.

Today 24 hospitals have access to NDMA which includes over 1 million digital mammography images, thus providing an estimated 300 doctors and researchers access to patient records, allowing faster diagnosis and treatment.

MyNDMA allows women around the country to have access to and control of their own electronic health records, and thus far nearly 1,200 women have already registered profiles.

In the past, medical records such as digital mammograms and diagnostic test results have only been stored locally which makes on demand access basically impossible. MyNDMA women have the ability to easily access records when visiting a new doctor or obtaining a second opinion, or to monitor there health over time.

"Women battling breast cancer typically see several different doctors through the course of their treatment," said Marisa C. Weiss, MD, president and founder of the non-profit organization, breastcancer.org, in a release. "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, these individual images and data can be made available to to providers anywhere in the country. Powered by IBM's grid computing and DB2 technology, researchers have the ability to 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 before would have taken months.
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