IntriHealth, a South African company focusing on imaging technology driven healthcare solutions is helping revolutionise radiology services in South Africa. Through best practice technology, the mammography departments of both Linksfield and Sunninghill hospitals in Gauteng are the first mammography sites in the country utilizing  a vendor neutral archive facility which replicates patient history at both sites. 

IntriHealth has entered into a partnership with Dr Shirley Lipschitz, a prominent mammographer in Johannesburg, to provide single-source, end-to-end management and archiving solutions that enable easy data retrieval and secure sharing for doctors, while simplifying management and IT maintenance overhead.

Dr Lipschitz says the attraction to IntriHealth solutions is its ability to archive old mammogram images from the patient’s first examination. “This creates a complete and detailed history, which is invaluable as this removes the necessity to physically bring old files and old images, which has traditionally been a recurring problem when these go missing,” explains Lipschitz.

Furthermore, Lipschitz says that the IntriHEALTH solution is also a tool assisting with on-going patient treatment as the archiving is compatible with all mammogram machines and therefore allows for image comparisons to be made.

“We are able to retrieve images online and securely send to either the workstation where the patient is being x-rayed, or to the workstation where the radiologist is able to retrieve them. We can also view all images from our sites at both Linksfield and Sunninghill almost immediately,” Lipschitz adds.

“IntriHealth is incredibly pleased to be so intrinsically involved with Dr Lipschitz. This partnership allows Dr Lipschitz and her colleagues with the ability to share or view medical images  at either of the two different locations,” says Mike Simpson, CEO of IntriHealth.

Simpson adds that since the company’s inception, IntriHealth has set a new standard for enterprise wide and cloud-based data archiving for the African radiology sector. In the digital era, where anything from shopping to banking has moved online, the medical fraternity has in some cases proven more conservative in adopting technology.

Simpson explains, “The medical industry deals with critical healthcare matters. Understandably, the adoption and integration of technology solutions needs to be done with a great degree of consideration. We think that the availability of digitally based x-rays, provides doctors with significantly greater  access. Doctors are now able to diagnose patients remotely and patients will be treated faster.” IntriHealth’s solutions are also proving valuable as it rolls out to rural and urban areas in both  South Africa and the rest of the continent where typical access to radiology services isn’t widely available.