Kingston General Hospital adopts Sentinelle Medical's new breast imaging system through HTAIP

Aug 28 2009

Sentinelle's Technology Helps Position KGH as the Eastern Ontario Hub for MR-Guided Breast Biopsy

Dr. Morris (Mickey) Milner, President and CEO of The Health Technology Exchange (HTX), announced the successful adoption of Sentinelle Medical's new breast imaging system by Kingston General Hospital (KGH), through the HTX's Health Technology Assessment and Implementation Program (HTAIP), a program funded by the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. This program supports the uptake of innovative medical technologies in Ontario through partnering companies with local hospitals. Program funding directly supports the assessment and implementation of a novel medical technology in an Ontario hospital.

"Ontario has been proud to watch Sentinelle Medical - a Premier's Innovation Award winner - thrive and grow from 25 to more than 100 employees in just two years," said Minister of Research and Innovation John Milloy. "Now, the validation that Kingston General Hospital will provide by adopting Sentinelle's innovative imaging system will help open new doors for the company while bringing leading-edge medical care to the region. Ontario is pleased to support this success by funding programs like the one provided by HTX."

"The program has provided Kingston General Hospital with access to a leading-edge imaging technology at a low cost." Director of Imaging at KGH, Karen Pearson further states, "Without programs like this, and with the budget constraints hospitals face, there is a good chance we would not have been able to get our hands on this new technology and assess its implementation in our hospital."

Sentinelle's new breast imaging system, the Vanguard(R) System for Siemens' magnetic resonance (MR) units, allows a cancer clinic to use innovative MR imaging technology to do breast scans, and to simultaneously guide and do breast biopsies. This is a new approach to diagnose and manage breast cancer.

"Sentinelle's system gives us superior images from breast scans and, at the same time, we can do image-guided biopsies. This higher and value-added performance has allowed us to expand the capabilities of our breast cancer program to the benefit of our patients," states Dr. Eric Sauerbrei, Director of Breast Imaging at Hotel Dieu Hospital and Kingston General Hospital.

As Sentinelle's CEO Cameron Piron puts it, "Sentinelle is gaining critical customer feedback from KGH that is invaluable to our company. KGH's ongoing assessment of our technology will bolster our commercialization efforts, as well as help develop best practices for future breast imaging programs in and outside Ontario."

"Our Health Technology Assessment and Implementation Program is proving to be a one-of-a-kind program that lowers barriers usually encountered when trying to implement a new technology in an Ontario hospital while providing companies with customer validations in a clinical setting that will help promote future product sales, locally and abroad," states Dr. Milner.

Source: HTX.CA - THE HEALTH TECHNOLOGY EXCHANGE (HTX)