Once I’d lived in this country for long enough to have learned a little of its history, I came to realise it has a remarkable legacy of innovation. Of course, I’d heard of Nobel and Ericsson, was vaguely familiar with one or two others, but the sheer scope of invention was new to me. Well, dear reader, I can tell you from personal experience that the tradition is alive and well. Take Sectra in Linköping, for example. This is a medical imaging company that, compared with some of its global competitors, is tiny. But what it lacks in financial muscle, it more than makes up for in brainpower.

The company’s latest innovation is Sectra OneScreen. Basically, this is a simple osteoporosis* screening tool that could save millions of women from a lifetime of pain. How does it work? Sectra OneScreen is offered to women as an additional service in conjunction with their regular breast examination. The procedure takes just thirty seconds. Following capture, the images are sent to Sectra’s online service for immediate analysis of bone density. The results help to identify women at risk. With early treatment, years of suffering can be avoided. Not that I know anything about healthcare budgeting, but investing in this solution must surely fall into the no-brainer category. A number of communications activities are in the pipeline for Sectra OneScreen. We look forward to sharing them with you in due course.

Osteoporosis (literally, porous bones) is a bone disease that leads to an increased risk of fracture. It is common in women after menopause.

Today Epica Book 23 arrived at the agency. On page 253 in the category “Prescription products” you can see our ad series for Sectra RIS/PACS. Something tells me that page will be well thumbed, at least here at the agency.

The Epica awards have become the reference for creative achievement in Europe. During 2009/10, 3 196 contributions were sent in from 476 agencies, photographers and TV and web production companies in 48 countries. About 900 contributions are then chosen and published.

At some point in her life, one in eight western women will develop breast cancer. It starts with a tiny lump, no bigger than a pinhead. Finding that lump before it spreads is a race against time. Every year, hundreds of thousands of women around the world lose the race. And yet, despite the enormous harvest of grief, there are reasons for optimism.

Just as technology is used to catch felons in the ‘outside world’, it is also harnessed to seek and eliminate ’bad guys’ within our bodies. That’s why breast screening—based on the latest science and human ingenuity can offer—is easily the most effective method for discovering tumors at an early stage. At Sandberg Trygg, we are proud to work with one of the leaders in the field, Linköping-based Sectra.

But science, however advanced, is only the second line of defence. The first one can be found in the nearest mirror. Regular breast self-examination is a vital part of staying healthy once you have reached a certain age. Download Sectra’s guide to effective self-examination here. (Or send the link to someone you know.) If you want to know more about breast cancer in general, this is a good place to start: www.breastcancer.org.

We all know healthcare providers are under growing pressure. Demographic trends (we’re living longer), shrinking budgets and fewer staff are all conspiring to give even the most stress tolerant managers grey hairs. As if that wasn’t enough, radiology faces its own nightmarish dilemma—trained (and available) radiologists are rapidly becoming rarer than hens’ teeth.  Is there any way out of this mess?

If there is, it’s called Sectra RIS/PACS (Radiology Information System/Picture Archiving and Communication System). This is going to get a bit technical, but I’ll try to explain. Basically, there’s no such thing as film in a modern radiology department; nowadays pictures are digital. What a RIS/PACS does is give radiologists access to images, interpretations and other relevant data—with just a few keystrokes.

The beauty of Sectra’s solution is that radiology departments actually have a chance of attracting those darned elusive radiologists. Quite simply because it allows them to work wherever they want as long as they have a reasonable internet connection. What’s more, by allowing hospitals and clinics to share scarce resources, it also means department managers can extend their search for available radiologists. It’s all thanks to a novel technology called RapidConnect , which streams the relevant parts of super-heavy images (think terabytes, not mega- or even gigabytes), allowing radiologists to start reading right away.

There, that wasn’t too technical, was it?

Sandberg Trygg has communicated the virtues of Sectra RIS/PACS across a variety of media—both on and offline, still and moving.

Right now we are helping Sectra communicate the benefits of their low-dose breast screening equipment – Sectra MicroDose Mammography. What is special about the technique is that the X-ray images are of the highest quality despite a much lower radiation dose than the competitors.

Sectra MicroDose Mammography is already used in 16 countries. In addition to communication directed towards clinics and hospitals, Sectra has chosen to turn directly to the women that will be taking the mammograms. Who wants to expose their body to more radiation than absolutely necessary?

In parallel, we are also working with Sectra PACS, a digital system for handling and archiving X-ray images.