Beating the big boys to a billion
ComMedica, the Imperial College spin-out responsible for wiring up the National Health Service (NHS) in England with a care record service, finally heard this month that they had beaten UK market leaders to part of an £800m contract in digital imaging for scans and X-rays.

The ComMedica system in image review mode. A series of MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, scans of the head (the lower images show a brain tumour). The system has been used for viewing head trauma cases admitted to St Mary's Hospital by neuro-surgeons at Queen Square (via NHSNet) since last September

The latest stage of the information technology programme, awarded 30 per cent of the bid to the CSC Alliance-ComMedica, forms a crucial part.

ComMedica will work in conjunction with CSC (computer systems corporation) and Kodak.

Run by the Department of Health's National Programme for Information Technology, NPfIT, the contract marks the culmination of a series of bidding rounds which asked companies to form consortiums to bid for five regions.

"After Christmas, the government decided to move the whole medical imaging programme for IT right up the agenda because medical images are sexy and good for the government," explained professor Richard Kitney, department of bioengineering and a director of ComMedica.

"The key reason we got the contract is because we are a fully web-based PACS - picture archiving and communications system - which is the new generation.

"We were up against companies like Siemens and Agfa and our technology was judged to be superior. We are also the UK's leading PACS supplier as we are the only one-everyone else is either from America or Europe."

PACS enables universal sharing of all forms of clinical information, including diagnostic-quality medical images. Clinicians can view medical images on demand on any standard PC or Mac rather than in special reading rooms.

"This is important for British industry as we don't really have a British healthcare technology industry. Our company has grown to 35 employees over four years and we will now hire another 50 people by the end of the year," added the professor.

"Richard Granger and Aiden Halligan, two architects of the programme, have been real visionaries. This is one example of taking the research done in College and following it through to its commercial success. Toumaz Technology is also a vital start-up, representing different aspects of rebuilding the healthcare industry."

He concluded: "A year ago, we knew we'd crossed the technical rubicon as our technology had been taken up and evaluated independently by two companies which each built a pilot system to show our technology worked.

"This contract represents the commercial rubicon. I haven't celebrated yet, but I will. Start-ups are such a roller-coaster - you often end up drained emotionally. We're waiting for the cheque in the bank."