ICON’s MIRA Chosen by Roche for Medical Image Repository
Continuing its move from transactional relationships to strategic alliances with clients, ICON have announced that they have been chosen by Roche as Roche’s technology partner for storing and managing medical images collected during clinical research programmes.
ICON is an international supplier of outsourced development services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries. The Company specialises in the strategic development, management and analysis of programs that support clinical development.
After a one-year trial programme, Roche has decided to commit to using ICON’s MIRA (Medical Image Review and Analysis) software as its principal online repository for medical images.
Roche is implementing MIRA using a ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) model, which allows the company to have access 24/7 to imaging information from anywhere globally and removes the technology charges associated with acquiring and sustaining an image-management system in house.
SaaS Solution
ICON noted that they are the first medical imaging provider to offer clients a SaaS solution for their image-management requirements.
Andrew Kraus, executive vice president and chief technology officer at ICON Medical Imaging, commented that “MIRA’s superior imaging capabilities, and fault tolerance mechanisms, made it an ideal solution to offer clients in a SaaS framework.”
Dr. Gudrun Zahlman, leader for imaging infrastructure at Roche, named the “comprehensive functionality” of MIRA, redundancy (i.e., duplication) of the imaging data in the European Union and United States, and the “responsive nature of the ICON staff” as key factors in sealing the partnership.
Roche has accomplished “seamless integration” of images hosted in MIRA with the company’s clinical data repository and data-mining tools for decision-making in clinical trials. Roche has also incorporated third-party image-analysis software within MIRA for quantitative biomarker research.