Clinical Information System Offers Access to Multispecialty Patient Imaging

A new imaging clinical information system (ICIS) unifies patient records by incorporating and linking multifacility and multidepartmental imaging data, providing clinicians with information to support continuity and effectiveness of patient care.

The system provides accessibility to patient care data, including images, to numerous participants, fueling meaningful use (MU) compliance, clinical collaboration, and empowering the patient. Agfa HealthCare (Mortsel, Belgium) provides access, through the electronic medical record (EMR), to create thorough, image-enabled medical records. This provides a longitudinal view of the patient’s imaging throughout the enterprise, so that clinicians have greater insights for the clinical outlook of their patient.

“In the delivery of care today, health systems around the world find themselves struggling to bring together data from various departments around the enterprise. Electronic health records are attempting to solve this problem for data that resides in a patient chart, but that solution leaves images behind,” said James Jay, vice president-imaging informatics, Agfa HealthCare. “As the use of images grows, so does the challenge of enabling access to images to all care providers. In addition, as more departments generate imaging data, simply consolidating storage does not solve the problem. Clinical workflow is needed to acquire, distribute, and review these images. Agfa HealthCare is a leader in recognizing this challenge. ICIS, leveraging our Xero viewer, delivers a comprehensive framework to enable flexible workflows to bring images into every step of the care continuum. This gives clinicians a single point of access for all imaging data, integrated into the electronic health record, which can help reduce duplicate procedures and enable a highly efficient care process.”

Beyond image enabling the EMR, Agfa HealthCare, together with Orion Health (Auckland, New Zealand), a global leader in health information exchange (HIE) and healthcare integration systems, have image-enabled HIEs, additionally furthering collaboration, and supporting ACOs. Images from Agfa HealthCare’s ICIS platform can be merged into a shared “single best view” of the patient using the Orion health clinical portal (currently a work-in progress). Healthcare systems and hospitals, by having a holistic view, can begin treatment of the patient sooner and help decrease costs resulting from unnecessary repeat exams and duplicate test orders.

The Orion health patient portal will also enable patients, their families and care teams to securely access a unified view of their EMR, including the complete longitudinal patient record and medical images due to the Agfa HealthCare technology platform.

“Healthcare reform demands that clinical imaging become a strategic resource advancing continuity of care throughout the enterprise. Working with Orion Health, we help organizations meet meaningful use criteria by providing clinicians with a single point-of-care access to the patient’s comprehensive medical record,” said Michael Green, president and CEO-Americas region, Agfa HealthCare. “Our proven solutions meet today’s healthcare enterprise interoperability challenges. Designed to create workflow and care efficiencies, we bring secure access of information to multispecialty departments, referring physician networks, and the personal care support teams involved in a patient’s care.”

Related Links:
Agfa HealthCare
Orion Health