New smartphone collaboration tool slashes time to treatment and hospital stays

Imaging Biometrics, a Wisconsin company best known for its IB Neuro application that maps blood flow in the brain for tumour characterization, has announced the release of an upgraded smartphone-based clinical collaboration platform. Described as a “pocket tumour board,” IB Nimble 2 is purported to speed the development of treatment plans and shorten hospital length of stays.“It isn’t practical anymore for busy clinicians to be tethered to desktop workstations for weekly tumour board meetings on Zoom or Teams,” said Michael Schmainda, Imaging Biometrics’ co-founder, president and CEO. Using the IB Nimble collaboration tool, multidisciplinary teams deciding on treatment plans for patients with brain tumours or other diseases can connect asynchronously using their smartphones anytime, anywhere, even sitting in an airport lounge.The original version of the communication platform was released by Imaging Biometrics in March 2020, the same month the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, but it lacked the integrated DICOM image viewing functionality of the current upgraded IB Nimble 2 product released in May. (DICOM, of course, is Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine, the global standard used to store, transmit and view medical imaging data.)Using IB Nimble 2, clinicians can access DICOM images and perform basic functions such as zooming, panning and scrolling through entire image series as well as add simple annotations, all without leaving the application. This represents a significant improvement over the original version. Clinicians can now dynamically interrogate images directly on their smartphones. “The ability to sync with PACS and view DICOM images within IB Nimble 2 fundamentally changes how clinicians and researchers collaborate,” said Dr. Joseph Bovi, a radiation oncologist at the ThedaCare Regional Cancer Center in Appleton, Wisconsin. “Users can now review imaging data in context, alongside colleagues in real-time without switching between systems. That’s a meaningful improvement in both efficiency and clinical decision making.”The revamped application includes many enhancements and features, including improved security protection and a beefed-up architecture, added Schmainda. It’s HIPPA compliant and fully encrypted, securing sensitive patient information.Pilots demonstrated that patients were able to receive treatment sooner and get out of hospital faster, reducing hospital length of stays from four or five days to one day. Time to treatment was cut in half.“Instead of a patient getting admitted on a Monday and having to wait to Thursday for the tumorr board meeting to get a care program aligned, it can happen in minutes or hours instead of days,” said Schmainda.IB Nimble 2 is not classified as a medical device requiring Health Canada licensing, so is available for use by academic centres and community hospitals seeking an improved workflow solution for tumour boards and other multidisciplinary teams collaborating on treatment plans for complex conditions.“It can be used for any disease or pathology that requires specialist collaboration,” said Schmainda. “Neuro is where we started, but IB Nimble 2 can also be used for stroke care, cardio, immunotherapy or any condition requiring quick decision-making informed by imaging, lab results and other patient information.”IB Nero, the company’s flagship product, evaluates tumour characteristics by visualizing the delivery of blood down to the microvascular level. Results from the recent EAF151 phase 2 multi-centre trial presented in May at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago showed that IB Neuro can discern patient response to bevacizumab, an angiogenesis inhibitor, after two weeks instead of usual three months.Clinicians monitoring a patient on a tumour board can review IB Neuro imaging using IB Nimble 2.“It’s a great way to quickly see whether a patient is responding to treatment,” said Schmainda. “It’s a very expensive treatment and some patients don’t tolerate it very well, so you want to know as soon as possible if they’re going to benefit. If they’re not responding to treatment, you can get them on a different treatment plan faster.“Vascular maps are important,” he explained, “because a tumour needs its own blood supply to grow rapidly. Angiogenesis—the formation of new blood vessels—is triggered when a tumor is about to grow. Before that’s even detected by standard imaging, we can pick up whether vascularity is increasing.”IB Nimble 2 is available in the U.S. from the Apple Store or Google Play and is expected to be available for download in Canada in the near future. Until then, Canadians interested in acquiring the application should reach out to support@imagingbiometrics.com

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