Agfa HealthCare signed a contract with Denmark's Hovedstaden Region (Capital Region) to install and manage its IMPAX radiology information system / picture archiving and communication system (RIS/PACS) throughout the region's 12 hospitals. The unified solution will be complemented by the company's IMPAX Data Center solution to create a cross-regional image and data repository.
Regional network serves 30% of Denmark's population
The Hovedstaden Region is one of five administrative units in Denmark providing healthcare, regional development and research for 1.6 million inhabitants, about 30% of Denmark's population. The area comprises 12 hospitals, together employing 33,000 staff. In total, the hospitals carry out 1.5 million diagnostic imaging exams per year and image storage requirements are expected to exceed more than one petabyte (or 1 million gigabytes) over the RIS/PACS' lifetime.
With Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX solution, patient images and data across the region will be stored in a consolidated and centralized image archive. The IMPAX Data Center component will not only accommodate images from radiology, but also from departments such as nuclear medicine, clinical physiology and cardiology. Interfaces will provide communication between the IMPAX solution and the region's existing hospital infrastructure.
Stringent tender process
Hovedstaden Region leaders issued a project tender with Agfa HealthCare selected following a thorough evaluation process. Eight separate evaluation groups, consisting of 20 people from the region (including 15 from the diagnostic imaging profession) participated.
The contract was signed on June 30. The region's five different RIS and PACS platforms will be replaced with the unified IMPAX solution. After implementation, around 20.000 staff members will be accessing Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX system.
Sharing data at the point of care
With Agfa HealthCare's region-wide IMPAX solution, authorized clinicians and other healthcare staff will have secure access to data for their patients, when and where they need it - at the point of care. The region's resources will be shared across all hospitals and healthcare staff will participate in the same clinical workflows, helping to achieve the region's centrally determined efficiency goals while supporting an expected 4 to 5% annual growth in diagnostic imaging studies.
"It is with great enthusiasm that Agfa HealthCare takes on this challenging cross-regional RIS/PACS project," says Mek Buhl Nielsen, Imaging Informatics Business Unit Manager, Agfa HealthCare Nordic. "Bringing our entire IMPAX portfolio to Region Hovedstaden to meet the highly complex organizational, workflow and technology requirements will help improve its clinical processes, and ultimately, the delivery of patient care."
"Agfa HealthCare has extensive experience in large-scale, integrated image and information management solutions. We are honored that the Hovedstaden Region turned to us to consolidate its diagnostic imaging IT infrastructure. It confirms our role as a leading player in the Danish and Nordic healthcare scene," concludes Franz Tiani, Business Group Manager, Agfa HealthCare, Region North, Central & Eastern Europe.
Related news articles:
- Agfa HealthCare's Profile
About Agfa
The Agfa-Gevaert Group is one of the world's leading companies in imaging and information technology. Agfa develops manufactures and markets analogue and digital systems for the printing industry (Agfa Graphics), for the healthcare sector (Agfa HealthCare), and for specific industrial applications (Agfa Materials). Agfa is headquartered in Mortsel, Belgium. The company is present in 40 countries and has agents in another 100 countries around the globe. The Agfa-Gevaert Group achieved a turnover of 2,948 million euro in 2010.
About Agfa HealthCare
Agfa HealthCare, a member of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, is a leading global provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions. The company has nearly a century of healthcare experience and has been a pioneer on the healthcare IT market since the early 1990's. Today Agfa HealthCare designs, develops and delivers state-of-the-art systems for capturing, managing and processing diagnostic images and clinical/administrative information for hospitals and healthcare facilities, as well as contrast media solutions to enable effective medical imaging results. The company has sales offices and agents in over 100 markets worldwide. Sales for Agfa HealthCare in 2010 were 1,180 million euro.