Refurbishing and Old Workhorse

We recently received a call from Parkview Hospital in El Reno, Oklahoma about their venerable Kodak film digitizer. Originally installed by InTelemed and Kodak at their facility in 1994, the system had provided many years of reliable service. It was refurbished in 2004 with a new computer, new software an a new laser. But this time the computer that was connected to the digitizer failed, so the IT staff at Parkview called us in for assistance.

The first order of business was to try to resurrect the existing computer. Older Kodak digitizers utilize a proprietary interface card that connects the computer to the digitizer. The card uses an ISA bus, which is no longer available on modern computers. So the best bet was to keep the existing computer and repair it versus trying to find a replacement computer with an ISA bus.

Phil Brummell, IT Director at Parkview, was able to install a new hard drive and load a fresh copy of Windows XP Pro on the system. Once that was complete, InTelemed went on-site to load the new software, set up the interface card, program the system, and perform a complete PM on the digitizer and create a new calibration file. This takes several hours and requires specialized tools such as laser calibration meters, calibrated test films, a volt meter and oscilloscope.

As one of the top Kodak/Lumisys digitizer repair companies in the world, InTelemed was easily able to bring the system to life and put an old workhorse back to work. The now 15 year old digitizer still meets all ACR standard for primary diagnostic interpretation, and is used to prior films to Parkview's radiologist for comparison against current CR images.