Jupiter Orthopedics: Viewing medical images anytime, anywhere

About Jupiter Orthopedics & Sports Medicine

Florida-based Jupiter Orthopedics & Sports Medicine specializes in treating injuries related to football, baseball, rugby, golf, tennis, biking, and running.

Location: United States

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About Ambra Health

Ambra Health is a medical data and image management SaaS provider and Google Cloud Technology Partner. Its medical image cloud platform serves as the backbone of imaging innovation for healthcare providers including Stanford Children’s Hospital and New England Baptist Hospital.

Jupiter Orthopedics & Sports Medicine reduces the time spent managing medical images by over 60% by leveraging the Ambra Health solution built on Google Cloud Platform.

Google Cloud Results

  • Minimizes reliance on compact discs (CDs), reducing staff and physician stress
  • Provides better patient care and treatment outcomes
  • Improves pre-op preparations

Enables more secure sharing of imaging with other medical professionals

Wade Van Sice, M.D., is the owner of Jupiter Orthopedics & Sports Medicine in Jupiter, Florida. Each year, he helps more than 3,000 patients bounce back from sports injuries through minimally invasive, arthroscopic surgeries he performs on knees, shoulders, and elbows.

In his practice, Dr. Van Sice must review as many as 300 MRI scans and x-rays taken of patient injuries each month. Because diagnostic image files are large, they’ve been stored and shared traditionally on compact discs, as CDs have a capacity of up to 700MB of data.

Inadvertently, the CDs can also cause delays, stress, and extra work for Dr. Van Sice and his staff. Often, patients bring their CDs with them on a pre-op visit with Dr. Van Sice and leave the discs with the Jupiter Orthopedics staff. Dr. Van Sice would access a CD to view a patient’s medical image during a pre-op appointment and again a few times before the patient’s surgery. But along the way, the CD containing the medical image might get misplaced or broken.

“It wasn’t unusual for us to interact with a CD as many as five different times, from the initial visit to the surgery, which wasn’t efficient,” says Dr. Van Sice. Staff would sometimes spend time trying to locate a missing CD, which was stressful for all involved.

“Wednesday is my OR day, and the night before, I review patient images and files as part of my pre-op planning,” says Dr. Van Sice. “But if a patient’s image file wasn’t available, I couldn’t adequately prepare.”

Some local medical imaging centers make patient scans accessible to physicians through an online portal, which eliminates the hassle of CDs—and introduces new inefficiencies. “I’d have to go to 25 different portals, each with a different interface, and each requiring a different user name and password,” Dr. Van Sice says. What’s more, the portals sometimes limit access to the images, such as preventing downloads.

“Preparing for surgery day is easier now, because I have all the images I need in one place. We’ve cut the time managing patient images by more than 60%. Plus, every day, and especially surgery days, we can focus on the patients instead of worrying about their medical image logistics.”

Wade Van Sice, M.D., Owner, Jupiter Orthopedics & Sports Medicine

Reducing image management time by over 60%

To eliminate the headaches of managing diagnostic medical image files, Jupiter Orthopedics turned to Ambra Health, a Google Cloud Platform Technology Partner. Ambra Health leverages Google Compute Engine combined with Google Persistent Disk as the foundation for its medical imaging management solutions, which it provides through its Ambra Health Suite to small businesses like Jupiter Orthopedics as well as larger organizations including Stanford Children’s Health and The Mayo Clinic.

Ambra Health uses Google Compute Engine to enable its customers to run virtual machines on demand. Medical imaging is stored via Google Persistent Disk, which offers automatic encryption for security and also provides Ambra Health customers with reliable disaster recovery and business continuity.

With Ambra Health, Jupiter Orthopedics has streamlined the management of its patients’ medical image files. Jupiter Orthopedics administrators can upload medical images from a patient’s CD directly into the practice’s secure Ambra Health cloud. There’s no further need to access the CD. The images are accessible anytime, anywhere—including on computers as well as mobile devices—through the Ambra Health cloud-based portal.

“If a patient calls with a question, I can look at her diagnostic image right away,” says Dr. Van Sice. “Preparing for surgery is easier now, because I have all the images I need in one place. We’ve cut the time managing patient images by more than 60%. Plus, every day, and especially surgery days, we can focus on the patients instead of worrying about their medical image logistics.”

Sharing images easily

Jupiter Orthopedics is now partnering with several local imaging centers, which can more securely process and route patient images to Jupiter Orthopedics via Jupiter’s Ambra Health gateway. In this scenario, the need to deal with CDs is completely eliminated.

Similarly, Dr. Van Sice can easily share patient image files with other medical professionals. Instead of express-mailing CDs or trying to email large attachments, he can share with another physician a more secure link to a diagnostic image file stored in the Jupiter Orthopedics Ambra Health cloud. Consequently, the process of getting second opinions is simplified and fast-tracked, which helps improve patient care and treatment outcomes.

For example, Dr. Van Sice was working with a patient who had been operated on by a surgeon on the West Coast. That surgeon had requested a CT scan six weeks after the surgery. Dr. Van Sice was able to share the CT scan with the surgeon while the patient was in Dr. Van Sice’s office. The net result: The West Coast surgeon could provide immediate feedback and next steps for the patient’s post-op treatment.

“Leveraging the security, compliance, brand, and geographic availability of Google Cloud Platform allows Ambra Health and our customers like Jupiter Orthopedics to maintain stable, fast, and more secure imaging capabilities worldwide.”

Andrew Duckworth, VP Business Development, Ambra Health

Also, with image files pushed to Jupiter Orthopedics, Dr. Van Sice and his staff are freed from having to log into imaging center portals, as well. This saves them time, so they can focus on patients instead of managing patient images.

Dr. Van Sice often delivers academic presentations at orthopedic conferences. With diagnostic images accessible and downloadable through the Ambra Health platform, he can easily insert them into his presentations to illustrate specific cases, saving additional time and aggravation.

Previously, Jupiter Orthopedics had an in-office X-ray machine, with images stored in a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS). Most recently, the practice upgraded to a digital X-ray machine, and the images it captures are automatically integrated into the Jupiter Orthopedics Ambra Health Suite. “Now I can have images from our machine and other imaging centers all in one place,” says Dr. Van Sice.

“We are leveraging the global footprint of Google Cloud Platform to support customer data locally in new markets, and to expand with international use cases, too.”

Andrew Duckworth, VP Business Development, Ambra Health

Expanding in the future

“Leveraging the security, compliance, brand, and geographic availability of Google Cloud Platform allows Ambra Health and our customers like Jupiter Orthopedics to maintain stable, fast, and more secure imaging capabilities worldwide,” says Andrew Duckworth, VP of Business Development, Ambra Health. “We’re aligned with the Google Cloud team on the importance of bringing the cloud to the healthcare and medical imaging market, in order to drive higher quality and more effective patient care. And the built-in security of Google Cloud Platform is key to making it happen.”

Ambra Health views Google Cloud Platform as a strategic platform that can help propel the medical imaging cloud provider’s growth. Currently, Google Cloud Platform runs on Google data centers located in 15 regions and 45 zones. “We take advantage of the global footprint of Google Cloud Platform to support customer data locally in new markets, and to expand with international use cases, too,” says Andrew. The Ambra Health network is growing rapidly. Currently, more than 1,000 healthcare providers share images using the Ambra network, resulting in more than 750,000 user logins per month from over 50 countries. In total, Ambra Health customers are managing more than 3 billion images on the platform.

What’s more, the partnership with Google opens the door for Ambra Health customers to benefit from Google machine learning and AI capabilities, accessible from within the Ambra Suite application.

Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.

Contact us

About Jupiter Orthopedics & Sports Medicine

Florida-based Jupiter Orthopedics & Sports Medicine specializes in treating injuries related to football, baseball, rugby, golf, tennis, biking, and running.

Location: United States

About Ambra Health

Ambra Health is a medical data and image management SaaS provider and Google Cloud Technology Partner. Its medical image cloud platform serves as the backbone of imaging innovation for healthcare providers including Stanford Children’s Hospital and New England Baptist Hospital.