PLEASANTON, Calif., Oct. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Today, Phoenix Technology Group (Phoenix), a leading provider of advanced ophthalmic imaging solutions, announced that it has completed the acquisition of FocusROP from InterVIEWMedical Systems. FocusROP is the leading telemedicine platform for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) screening. The FocusROP solution will become Phoenix CONNECT and will be available to hospitals and ophthalmology practices worldwide in the coming months to expand access to photographic screening of ROP.
Phoenix CONNECT will be available for use with all wide-angle retinal imaging cameras, including the Phoenix ICON camera and the RetCam by Natus. Phoenix will continue to service, support, and advance the existing subscription agreements with all of the hospitals that are currently using FocusROP.
Developed over the past 10 years by a team of leading ophthalmologists, including Dr. Mike Trese M.D., Dr. Tony Capone M.D., Dr. Kim Dresner M.D., Ph.D., and Dr. Carl Park M.D., FocusROP brings evidence-based care to any infant bedside while implementing a solidly structured safety-net paradigm for ROP management. The platform has been used to efficiently screen thousands of babies for ROP. Today the FocusROP platform is in use weekly to deliver best-in-class ROP screening at leading hospitals across the country.
"ROP is the leading cause of blindness in premature infants," said Mike Trese M.D., president, InterVIEW Medical Systems. "With proper treatment, there is a very high success rate, but the key to proper treatment is timely screening."
The Phoenix CONNECT platform delivers better documentation than a retinal drawing. It is designed to reduce doctor errors which can lead to missed treatment opportunities and therefore decreases medical malpractice risk and delivers better care. Further, the platform allows for rapid online access to statewide, national and international expert consultations.
"Effective ROP screening faces a core problem: babies and the doctors that treat them are often not in the same location, and examination by indirect ophthalmoscope is inefficient and lacks photo documentation," said J. Scott Carr, chairman and CEO of Phoenix. "We are delighted to bring FocusROP to our clinical customers as Phoenix CONNECT to bridge these issues with a telemedicine paradigm. Phoenix CONNECT connects the nursing, ophthalmology, and neonatology teams to enable delivery of the best care by facilitating timely expert screening to babies in any NICU. And, the platform implements a proven screening workflow that generates critical photo documentation to enhance treatment determination and reduce risk."
As part of the acquisition, Dr. Trese will be joining the Phoenix Board of Directors. Dr. Dresner, Dr. Capone, and Dr. Park will continue to be associated with Phoenix CONNECT, advising Phoenix on current and emerging ROP care paradigms. Phoenix will invest in additional software development, drawing on its team's experience delivering software-as-a-service product offerings.
About Phoenix CONNECT
With Phoenix CONNECT, hospitals can optimize the ROP screening process for everyone – nursing, ophthalmology, and neonatology – while continuing to provide the highest level of care. Designed with today's busy yet exacting nurses, ophthalmologists, and neonatologists in mind, the Phoenix CONNECT platform offers a number of important time-saving features to structure the screening workflow:
- easy upload and identification of images taken at bedside in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)
- management of the screening workflow from image upload through to report delivery and scheduling a follow-up screening exam
- text message alerts to physicians when exams require interpretation
- remote exam interpretation from anywhere using a computer, tablet, or mobile phone
- tools to speed image review, including automatic montage and identification of Zone 1
- image capture methodology that reduces subjectivity and creates valuable photo documentation, and
- automatic report generation delivering results back to the hospital and neonatologist in a structured, easy to read format.
Phoenix CONNECT is hosted in redundant, secure data centers in the United States, carrying a SOC-2 certification and operating to comply with HIPAA requirements. Phoenix CONNECT will be available in a European data center in early 2019, conforming to GDPR requirements.
Phoenix will also explore on-premise offerings for hospital networks that require "behind the firewall" implementations of telemedicine applications.
About Phoenix Technology Group: Phoenix Technology Group (http://www.phoenixtech.com) contributes to the fight to prevent blindness by providing physicians, clinicians, and researchers around the world with advanced technology to image and understand the eye. Founded by Bert Massie, Ph.D., inventor of the first digital camera for pediatric retinal imaging, our journey began with the creation of the Phoenix MICRON platform for in-vivo imaging of animals in eye research. Today, the MICRON platform is the standard for researchers around the world, combining bright field imaging, image-guided OCT, CNV, and focal and Ganzfeld ERG. Our breakthrough innovations with the Phoenix MICRON platform led to us to reinvent wide-field retinal imaging for human clinical applications, resulting in the recently launched Phoenix ICON product line. The Phoenix ICON platform is a revolutionary retinal imaging platform delivering high-contrast, high-resolution images, with quality you can see. You'll find these breakthroughs inside the ICON platform: completely reinvented illumination, optics, and sensor technology, deployed on a modular platform that was designed from the ground-up for ease of use, reliability, and incredible image quality.
SOURCE Phoenix Technology Group
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