Revolutionizing Diagnosis, Documentation, and Training
Of course, this all happens in the background, invisible to our customers. What physicians see is a powerful new system for providing superior visualization and documentation -- allowing for earlier detection and prevention of blindness.
There are now more than 400 RetCam systems being used around the world for documenting diseases such as Retinoblastoma (eye cancer) and Retinopathy of Prematurity. The RetCam also photographs and documents retinal hemorrhages associated with Shaken Baby Syndrome. The physician then has clear wide-field images that can be printed out on a photo printer for medico-legal documentation.
Doctors tell us that because the data is being precisely recorded and stored in real-time as they conduct the examination, they've been able to find tumors (Retinoblastoma) earlier.
In addition, our customers praise the RetCam II's ease-of-use. It provides interaction through an intuitive user interface, which makes it easier to expand use beyond ophthalmologists to nurse practitioners and other medical personnel. In fact, the system's database utilities make it well-suited for use specifically as an educational tool; doctors use the stored data and images to inform and teach parents, neonatologists and other specialists, and medical students about eye disorders. This saves hospitals a great deal in costly and stressful "transference."
The Bottom Line
In our case, the choice of a native object-oriented database helped our developers save a good six months in time-to-market. But we would have easily required additional time if we'd opted for traditional SQL database; requiring cumbersome object-field mapping code for designing, building, and implementing a database schema separate from the object model.
We managed to limit or eliminate lots of the distribution and resource requirement headaches typically associated with distributed database implementation.
Time spent supporting the application is also reduced because there is simply less software to support: The database is a file on the system and a collection of objects in the code, rather than a separate, bulky server process running on each system.
In accordance with the FDA medical device and ISO 13485:2003 requirements we were required to verify and validate the integrity, repeatability and accuracy of patient data storage and retrieval. With the powerful db4o program as the backbone, we passed all these tests with flying colors.
We are pleased to be able to boast that Clarity Medical has created a system with new capabilities that are ground-breaking in the fight against eye disease. With careful selection of the right database technology, we've managed to accomplish this with minimal in-house expense and effort.
