Olympus Corporation of the Americas (OCA) has struck a deal to buy Image Stream Medical. The takeover will give Olympus control of Image Stream’s suite of healthcare imaging and video tools, setting it up to combine the capabilities with its own imaging and surgical technologies.
Image Stream bundles its technologies under the EasySuite banner. The suite enables surgeons to capture video and still images, stream them to remote consultants and output them to 4K monitors for viewing by the in-room team. Image Stream provides underlying IT capabilities to help hospitals adopt the imaging platform and manage the media it generates.
These technologies are the latest iterations of an approach Image Stream has pushed since it started selling DVD-based surgical video recorders more than 15 years ago.
“Image Stream Medical was founded with the vision of solving the key clinical and business challenges for healthcare systems by facilitating collaboration across their enterprises," Image Stream CEO Eddie Mitchell said in a statement. "By connecting clinicians with the visual insights they need, and with each other no matter where they are, we help teams work more efficiently and effectively."
OCA has firsthand experience of these capabilities from its time as a reseller of Image Stream’s procedure recording platform and enterprise-wide content management system. Based on this, OCA sees Image Stream’s capabilities meshing with its own imaging and surgical products. Over time, it thinks the combination of the companies will lead to the development of “an expanded and enhanced portfolio,” although at this stage it has yet to flesh out its thinking publicly.
For the foreseeable future, Image Stream will operate under its existing name. OCA has sought to downplay possible concerns about the takeover's effect on Image Stream’s existing customers. OCA said there will be “no immediate changes in [the] resources, services or contacts” provided to Image Stream’s customers. The longer-term implications of the takeover of Image Stream, which has a collaboration with Philips Healthcare, are less clear.