What is eDiaMoND?

eDiaMoND is a collaborative project funded through an EPSRC grant and IBM's SUR grant. It is strictly a research project which has the ambitious aim of proving the benefits of grid technology to eHealth, in this case for Breast Imaging in the UK.

eDiaMoND is a much publicised project which is deemed to be of huge benefit to the NHS and to the female population in the UK. The stakeholders of the project and the project teams have a vision of how the work over the next 2 years can shape the future of mammography and for eHealth in general. It is recognised that the stresses upon the Breast Screening Programme in the UK, and for Breast Imaging in general, are increasing, putting an already stretched service under more pressure. This is due to a shortage of radiologists as well as increasing volumes of patients through increasing age range and natural growth for the screening population.

The vision for eDiaMoND is to recognise the current constraints which exist with the non-digital and low technology environment in which clinicians work, and seek to develop solutions which increase the efficiency of the service and improve the tools available to those staff.

This will be done through improving the access to data through digitisation, enabling faster and more reliable retrieval of information.

Tony Blair Statement, May 2002

"The emerging field of e-science should transform this kind of work. It's significant that the UK is the first country to develop a national e-science grid, which intends to make access to computing power, scientific data repositories and experimental facilities as easy as the web makes access to information. One of the pilot e-science projects is to develop a digital mammographic archive, together with an intelligent medical decision support system for breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. An individual hospital will not have supercomputing facilties, but through the grid it could buy the time it needs. So the surgeon in the operating room will be able to pull up a high-resolution mammogram to identify exactly where the tumour can be found."

'eDiaMond has had extensive press coverage since October 2002. This link will take you to a selection of this News Coverage.

This Glossary will help you to understand some of the terminology used in the project.