Hitachi Aloka Medical America Receives Innovative Technology Designation from Vizient, Inc. for SOFIA 3D Breast Ultrasound System
Designation recognizes products that bring improvements to the health care industry
Wallingford, Connecticut, November25, 2016– Hitachi Aloka Medical America, Inc. announced the SOFIA 3D Breast Ultrasound system has received an Innovative Technology designation from Vizient, Inc. the largest member-driven health care performance improvement company in the country. The designation was based on reviews of SOFIA by hospital experts who attended Vizient’s Innovative Technology Exchange in September 2016. The event provided medical technology suppliers the opportunity to demonstrate their product and gain direct feedback from 1300 onsite clinical experts and health care providers on the impact their products may have on improving clinical care, safety, or benefits to an organization’s care and business model.
Designed for women whose breast density may result in an inconclusive mammogram, SOFIA uses ultrasound to create a 3D volume of the whole breast. Patients are imaged in the prone position, placing their breast onto SOFIA’s unique radial scanning array. With the breast compressed simply by laying prone, the patient rests comfortably during the system’s rapid automated 30-second scan. The acquired high-resolution ultrasound images are then sent to the SOFIA workstation and reconstructed into a 3D volume of the entire breast that can be quickly interpreted by the radiologist.
“While the medical community has recognized for some time that ultrasound should be a more integral part of the imaging continuum for women with dense breasts, the medical device industry has been slow to introduce products that help to provide efficiencies in bilateral whole-breast ultrasound exams,” said David Famiglietti, President and General Manager of Hitachi Aloka. “We are excited that Vizient has recognized SOFIA’s ability to inject the speed and efficiency needed for the rapid and wide scale adoption of this life-saving exam to its membership.”
“Due to the number of products and services being released and marketed as ‘innovative’, member hospitals truly value the peer-review system in place at Vizient to help them identify products worth further evaluation at their own facilities,” said Debbie Archer, director of procurement and leader of Vizient’s Innovative Technology program for suppliers. “After a review of SOFIA 3D Breast Ultrasound system, Vizient’s members agreed this solution offers unique and incremental benefit over other products available on the market today, and recommended it for an Innovative Technology designation.”
Vizient, Inc. represents the combined strengths of the organizations formerly known as VHA Inc., University HealthSystem Consortium, Novation and MedAssets’ Spend and Clinical Resource Management. Since 2003, nearly 2200 new and innovative products and technologies have been submitted through the Vizient Innovative Technology program. Vizient works with member-led councils and task forces to identify and review potentially innovative products. If it is determined that a product is innovative, a contract may be awarded outside of Vizient’s competitive bid cycle.