AG Mednet to Provide Image Network for Southwest Onco...( With AG Mednet SWOG Will Enhance Qual...)

With AG Mednet, SWOG Will Enhance Quality and Speed Image Transfer at Lower

Cost While Ensuring 21 CFR Part 11 Compliance

BOSTON, Dec. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- AG Mednet, the world's largest diagnostic imaging network, today announced it has been selected by Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG), one of the largest federally funded cancer clinical trials cooperative groups in the United States, to provide a secure, 21 CFR Part 11- and HIPAA-compliant image network. With the AG Mednet network, SWOG will be able to enhance quality and increase the speed and flexibility of image transfer among its more than 550 investigating centers, including 17 of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Cancer Centers, all while reducing associated costs.

Funded by research grants from the NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, SWOG conducts clinical trials to prevent and treat cancer, and to improve the quality of life for cancer survivors.

In a cooperative group setting such as SWOG, managing imaging data has been challenging. Obtaining concise data on images, and getting that information entered into the research record, was inefficient and thought to be a potential source of bias, a much-debated topic with the FDA relative to registration studies. SWOG looked hard for a solution to this issue, since mailing films for an independent third party interpretation was not efficient and plagued with compliance issues, while the electronic transfer of images outside of institutions proved to be a technological hurdle. The AG Mednet diagnostic imaging network enabled SWOG to overcome these challenges at minimal cost.

"A goal for SWOG is to minimize the impact on workflow, since we recognize our investigators are extremely busy," commented Dr. Laurence H. Baker, Chairman of SWOG and Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan. "With AG Mednet, our investigators will be able to decrease the workload involved with image tra
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