Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is pleased to announce the completion of a major equipment upgrade in the Cardiac Cathlab. This $2.4 million project was accomplished with the support of our community, the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation and the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care. This new initiative embraces the advances in state-of-the-art innovation to help successfully diagnose and treat cardiac illnesses.

This complex upgrade involves 3 pieces of new technology:

• Flat Detector Digital Cardiac Imaging System, Philips Medical
• Cardiac Digital Picture Archiving & Reporting System, Heartlab
• Hemodynamic Data Management System, Witt Biomedical

The Philips Medical Imaging System allows TBRHSC cardiologists to obtain the best cardiac images possible with state-of-the-art 'Flat Detector' technology. The superior quality of the images allows accurate diagnosis and treatment of cardiac disease. Additional benefits of this technology include:

• Rotating and 3D images
• Reduced radiation exposure and contrast dosages for patients
• Procedure table has improved patient comfort and safety features

Our new Heartlab Archiving System allows all Cathlab images to be recorded and stored digitally, with enhanced quality, and eliminates the need for manually filing films or discs. The images are now accessible to more physicians, including those in other hospitals. In addition to storing cardiac catheterization images, Heartlab also stores all echocardiography images. Cardiologists are now able to instantly generate final procedure reports that are available in our Electronic Medical Record across all Northwestern area hospitals.

• Eliminates growing needs for storage space
• Allows rapid transmission of pictures to other hospitals
• Reduces the workload for our transcriptionists
• Physicians may compare past studies to new images