healthcare – Fujifilm Corporate Blog

MRI scan stressful for paediatric patients? Not with the help of Little Lucy!

by ggrassi93 February 15, 2022 Comments0

To undergo an MRI scan can be a stressful experience for paediatric patients. The good news is that this doesn’t have to be that way. Preparing the children for the upcoming scan is an important element to mitigate stress, fear, and anxiety. How? With a little help of the young patients’ new best friend: Little Lucy.

Stress factors of paediatric patients undergoing an MRI scan

Before looking at how the stress of young patients who have to undergo an MRI scan can be reduced, let’s first look at the factors causing the stress:

Often, children experience stress before the MRI scan actually takes place. They are afraid of the big machine and of the noise it makes.
Sometimes they are scared to lay in the narrow space.
Also, having to lay still during the scan can be both boring and fatiguing for them.

All in all, enough factors that can cause the young patients stress and enough reason to find a way to reduce it.

How to mitigate children’s ‘MRI scan stress’?

The above-mentioned stress factors can luckily be reduced. Not only by using the new(er) MRI systems, such as the OASIS^TM and APERTO Lucent Plus^TM,which, compared to the traditional MRI systems, are more open and silent, but also by preparing the children for what they can expect of the MRI scan. By playfully introducing them to all the steps involved in undergoing an MRI scan, the children will feel more comfortable and at ease. This is exactly the reason FUJIFILM Healthcare started Project Little Lucy.

Little Lucy helps children to be prepared for the MRI scan

Project Little Lucy is built around the illustrated story ‘The great adventure of Little Lucy’. It is about a small bear who gets hurt and undergoes an MRI scan. In the story, Little Lucy bravely goes through her medical examination, just like real little patients. She learns how the examination takes place and intrigued, asks the doctors many questions about the device.

The book includes colouring pages and is accompanied by gadgets such as pencils, soft toys and a shirt, as well as with graphics for the walls and devices. While reading and playing, the children identify with Lucy’s experience and will learn what they can expect. When the examination is over, the children leave with their ‘Brave Patient’s Diploma’. Everything to keep the little ones busy, make the wait in the waiting room more pleasant and to round off the examination on a positive note.

Learn more about stress-free MRI scans for paediatric patients

Like you, FUJIFILM Healthcare aims to mitigate stress in children that need to undergo an MRI scan. Don’t we all want them to feel comfortable and safe in medical facilities? Learn more about Project Little Lucy and our paediatric MRI and other medical imaging systems here.

All trademarks are the property of Fujifilm Corporation.

Filed under blog healthcare

World Cancer Day 2022

by maurice kammholz February 4, 2022 Comments0

World Cancer Day – every 4th February – is a global initiative led by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC). Starting more than 20 years ago, World Cancer Day has grown into a positive movement for everyone to face one of our greatest challenges in history. By raising global awareness, improving education and collective action, we are all working together to reimagine a world where millions of lives can be saved through preventive care and access to life-saving cancer treatment is equitable for all.

While we live in an era of impressive advances in healthcare – from artificial intelligence to hyper-technological devices – many of us seeking cancer treatment encounter barriers at every turn: income, education, geographical location and discrimination. That is why the Union for International Cancer Control has chosen as the theme for this year’s World Cancer Day, #ClosetheCareGap. To raise awareness of this gap that affects people all over the world, in both high- and low- and middle-income countries.

And we, at Fujifilm, are also promoting this initiative. For years, our goal has been to find solutions for society’s problems. One of the main goals of our Sustainable Value Plan 2030 is to improve access to healthcare globally, reduce the burden on patients by providing innovative solutions for medical imaging and enable early detection of diseases using AI and IT.

Last year – on 4 February 2021–we inaugurated NURA*, a Fujifilm cancer screening center in India. Its cancer screening program includes 10 tests, including breast cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer. With NURA, our vision is to introduce the culture of regular health screening. We will continue to support the development of healthcare by providing state-of-the-art products and services that help improve the health and quality of life of people around the world to #CloseTheCareGap.

*In partnership with Dr Kutty’s Healthcare

Filed under blog healthcare

Iseni Sanità Group – a prime example

by Fujifilm EMEA July 2, 2021 Comments0

Yesterday at a virtual European event, the newly named FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe and FUJIFILM Europe’s existing European medical business presented a complete and integrated portfolio of diagnostic products and services, including CT, MRI, X-ray, AI, PACS, endoscopy and ultrasound systems. The launch follows the completion of Fujifilm’s acquisition and takeover of Hitachi’s Diagnostic Imaging-related business on 31 March 2021, with the newly named FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe.

Synergy between Fujifilm and Fujifilm Healthcare creates new healthcare value

This new comprehensive product portfolio has already been installed in Italy by one of our main partners, Iseni Sanità Group, which has renewed its equipment including FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe equipment, representing the first case study of Fujifilm’s new broader product portfolio.

Today, thanks to the renewal of Iseni Sanità Group’s MRI and CT Hitachi equipment with FUJIFILM Healthcare Europe’s new Echelon Smart Plus MRI scanner and Scenaria View Advanced CT scanner, this Iseni Sanità Group case study represents the first concrete example of Fujifilm’s new comprehensive healthcare partnership.

The long-term partnership between Fujifilm Italia and Iseni Sanità Group is now fully consolidated

Iseni Sanità Group, a diagnostic and surgical hospitalization and treatment institute, has been using Fujifilm’s technologies and equipment for years, continuously updating its installed base and renewing its multi-year partnership with Fujifilm. Based out of the Italian province of Varese, the Group makes use of the Synapse Workflow, Synapse PACS and Synapse 3D elements of the Synapse software suite. It collaborates with esteemed clinical specialists and carries out around 20,000 examinations per year divided between MRI, CT, X-ray, bone densitometry, mammography, ultrasound and endoscopy. All systems are integrated with each other in various diagnostic methods, supporting the management of approximately 100,000 patients a year from all over Italy, and about 10% from overseas.

Filed under healthcare Interviews

Learning from the Pandemic

by Fujifilm EMEA June 19, 2021 Comments0

Radiology – the ‘gatekeeper’ specialty to unlocking the potential of digital health

Can radiology become the most important medical specialty in the field of digital health?

This was one of the questions posed as part of Fujifilm’s Healthcare’s Digital European Tour, a series of virtual events designed to highlight the contribution radiology has been making during – and after – the pandemic.

The event saw clinicians from across Europe share their experience of Covid-19, and the vital role radiologist have and can play in the fight.

And according to Professor Thomas Vogl, Director of the Institute for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at Frankfurt University Hospital, radiology services will be vital to the future of healthcare. Citing the example of a network of hospitals across Germany sharing lung CT scans to help diagnose Covid, Prof Vogl believes the opportunities are enormous. He described how the potential of artificial intelligence when combined with innovations in radiology, could transform the way we approach diagnostics across a number of illness areas.

The central role of radiology in the evolving use of diagnostics was a recurring theme of the whole event, which heard reports from speakers based across Europe.

And while advances in technology can never replace physicians – a point made by Ing. Giovanni Delgrossi, Director of Information Systems ASST Vimercate in Italy – it can transform the speed and effectiveness of our physicians; and radiographers could be the ‘gatekeepers’ to unlocking this potential.

It is a development that Ing. Delgrossi believes could help move healthcare from being reactive, (even passive) to being proactive – to finding and treating more health problems, more quickly. This belief is fed by his experiences during the pandemic.

In Vemercate, they were able to use artificial intelligence to scan an average of 80-90 chest x-rays per day and separate the Covid positive from the Covid negative; helping them to identify over 900 Covid patients. However, the importance of radiology doesn’t simply fit within the confinement of the height of the pandemic.
(Read the full case of Vimercate Hospital downloading Take Away 17 here: synapse.fujifilm.eu/fujifilm-takeaway/ )

The problems of care and diagnosis backlogs threatens health systems across Europe. In Italy for example, 521,000 (12%) fewer new diagnoses were made, and the number of patients starting a new treatment fell by 277,000 (10%). This is a picture that speakers from across Europe shared; In Germany, half of surgeries have been postponed; In France, new diagnoses of cancer were down 23%, and 2.2m operations were canceled; and in the UK, 1.7m people were waiting more than 18 weeks to start a new treatment. This combines to create a Europe-wide tidal wave of patients waiting to be diagnosed and treated.

The role of innovative radiological solutions in helping to work through these backlogs was highlighted as being potentially crucial. Fiona Thow, formerly of NHS Improvement in England talked about how Fujifilm’s Xair, a portable x-ray unit, was transforming the way in which care could be delivered. She described how, by taking care out to community diagnostic hubs nearer the patients, they could identify and triage patients more quickly, and help keep patients away from acute centres, allowing them to focus on the patients that require acute care.

And in France, radiologists are collaborating across Europe to share data on breast imaging to help identify how big a backlog they are likely to face so that they can continue to identify as many cases of breast cancer as early as possible, giving patients the best possible outcomes.

While there is much to be concerned about – the impact of Covid is profound and will be long term – there is enormous pride that radiologists can, and are, playing such a key role in helping to deal with the pandemic’s effects. For us at Fujifilm, there is a tremendous affirmation in that; what we do really matters. That by never stopping innovating, and producing new technologies, we have helped our health services across Europe cope with the pandemic. And that by continuing to produce the technologies that we do, we are helping to equip not just our radiologists, but the entire multi-disciplinary care team – with the tools they need to minimise the impact of the pandemic on patients and maximise the effectiveness of their care.

If we can collectively achieve that, then perhaps we will be able to say that radiology really is the gatekeeper specialty to unlocking the potential of digital health.

Filed under healthcare