Carestream anticipates that by adding these communications and collaboration capabilities, medical professionals will be able to improve the speed and efficiency of diagnosis, resulting in faster results and treatment plans. It anticipates that medical professionals will be able to find experts quickly based on location and topic, and collaborate instantly. Users will also be able to share computer screens in real time, highlighting key parts of an image to collaborate on a diagnosis. For example, if a radiologist determines that urgent care is required, he can click on the referring physician's name -- which appears in the application -- to begin an instant messaging dialog or VoIP call. If they want additional opinions, it would be easy to add colleagues to the discussion.

"IBM's communications tools will enable real-time discussion between medical professionals both inside and outside of the radiology department, which can lead to quicker diagnosis and communication of critical results for an overall improvement in patient care," said Michael W. Jackman, Carestream Health Healthcare Information Solutions president. "We continue to provide advanced digital technologies that help the physician community collaborate and work together more effectively. This agreement with IBM is another example of the speed with which we are making valuable solutions available to healthcare providers around the world."

This software incorporates the physician referral community into the radiology workflow. Carestream plans to add Lotus Sametime integration to:

• CARESTREAM RIS (radiology information system), a workflow, scheduling, and information solution for radiology departments
• CARESTREAM PACS (picture archiving and communications system), an electronic system for management, viewing, sharing, and storage of radiology imaging studies
• KODAK CARESTREAM Digital Dashboard, which gives system administrators a way to monitor equipment performance, storage utilization, and user volumes