Sony releases next generation NUCLeUS™, the smart imaging platform for hospitals

Sony has released a new, more user-friendly workflow version of its vendor-neutral medical imaging platform, NUCLeUS. The next generation will offer hospitals a streamlined digital imaging workflow and create valuable efficiency improvements. It can also easily deliver key information, such as video and audio wherever and whenever it is needed across the whole hospital campus.

NUCLeUS offers hospitals a host of new revolutionary benefits. From enhanced training and education tools to cost-effective networked medical image content management. It can boost the performance of all imaging applications and service offerings in interventional suites, operating and examination rooms. It also provides users with a real-time transmission function, which helps clinicians and management teams make more informed decisions.

A new world of smart medical applications is emerging, and Sony is committed to helping healthcare organisations streamline their imaging workflows, so clinical staff can provide the best professional offerings.

NUCLeUS aims to be the ‘operating system’ for medical imaging in hospitals by contributing to operational efficiency, safety and quality improvements and providing tools for better informed clinical decisions. The secure and ultra-fast connectivity to an almost unlimited on or off-premise computing power, a toolbox for signal processing and new AI technologies bring OR integration and real-time data processing in hospitals to a completely new level of workflow efficiency in healthcare.

“At Sony, we aim to develop the most advanced imaging solutions that empower medical professionals to provide their patients with better and more effective care. This new release of NUCLeUS is a big step forward on that path,” said Nigel Monisse, Business Head – Medical Imaging Solutions, Sony Professional Solutions MEA. “With the steady growth of connected devices in modern hospitals, it’s now becoming a clear necessity to have a central imaging ‘operating system’ in place that collects, stores and distributes medical imaging files, not only within operating rooms, examination rooms and interventional suites but across the entire hospital network.”

“With NUCLeUS, medical professionals can be confident of the highest image quality and operational efficiency in their imaging workflow, to assist them in making better informed clinical decisions.”

NUCLeUS showcases the continued Sony investment in providing a flexible and future-proof software-based environment for the healthcare industry. It introduces a new suite of NUCLeUS smart applications and is designed to utilise existing hospital network infrastructures as much as possible ensuring a fast return of investment.

The new additions and improvements available in the next generation of NUCLeUS include:

Workflow-orientated features for clinicians:

• Handle multi-format, multi-standard and any resolution up to 4K
• Enhanced streaming and recording of high-quality audio and video, powered by advanced video switching and routing capabilities
• Improved image routing and viewing options, enabling smoother imaging workflows through all phases of a surgical intervention, from the planning stage to post-operative patient reviews
• Updated education and teaching broadcasting capabilities by using real-time communication tools such as smarter annotation features
• Workflow enhancement through NUCLeUS smart applications such as rotation correction

IT-oriented features:

• Fully scalable solution which can be easily extended to other rooms or hospital buildings at any time
• Provides IT managers with a secure and encrypted way of remote and preventive solution maintenance, including self-monitoring capabilities

Integration-oriented features:

• Vendor-neutral software-driven platform
• Greater support for 3rd party applications via business APIs and a variety of mechanisms and tools
• Secure HIS integration and fully HL7/DICOM compatible

Customers that have deployed NUCLeUS in a move to create enhanced surgical imaging workflows and optimise their operations include:

• University Hospitals Leuven (UZ Leuven), one of Belgium’s leading teaching hospitals with almost 2,000 patient beds and more than 9,000 employees, uses NUCLeUS to perform thousands of surgical interventions every year across 34 of its digital operating rooms
• Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden chose NUCLeUSas their standard video-over-IP platform. 31 NUCLeUS systems will be installed to manage video-based workflows inside the operating rooms and also outside connection to auditoriums and lecture rooms, as well as remote advisory through telestration.

This next generation is the result of Sony’s acquisition in 2016 of eSATURNUS, a Belgium-based company that provides leading clinical video-over-IP solutions in the medical field. This expertise, combined with Sony’s leading imaging and AV/IT technologies, has led to the continual investment and development of NUCLeUS.