Integrated RIS/PACS/Reporting and Enterprise Visualization Tools Provide Continuity of Patient Care from Order to Result

New integrated radiology information systems/picture archiving and communication systems (RIS/PACS) bring a consolidated view and centralized management of patient image and information data to the point-of-care to improve the effectiveness and experience of radiologists, clinical staff, and referring physicians.

Agfa HealthCare (Mortsel, Belgium), a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare information technology (IT) systems, announced that it presented the enhanced integrated workflow capabilities of its Impax RIS/PACS and reporting solutions for radiology and its Enterprise Visualization solutions, Impax Data Center and Impax Mobility Enterprise Clinical Viewer, at SIIM 2009, the annual meeting for the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine, held June 4-7, 2009, in Charlotte, NC, USA.

Agfa HealthCare's systems help solve hospitals' and healthcare facilities' enterprise imaging storage infrastructure and viewing needs, enabling a longitudinal imaging patient record in the continuity of care. The integrated RIS/PACS/reporting offering includes Impax 6, a web-deployable image and information management solution, which helps streamline enterprise workflow and deliver increased efficiency and productivity to hospitals and healthcare facilities.

The Impax RIS enables end-to-end electronic management of radiology operations, includes modules ranging from patient registration to worklist generation and medical reporting to transcription and business intelligence, as well as optional modules for scheduling and management reporting.

Impax Reporting is an integrated reporting tool set that supports voice recognition and digital dictation models and uses macros and other automated editing features that allow automatic distribution to the RIS and the referring physician.

Impax Enterprise Scheduling, a web-based scheduling application, enables referring physicians and their staff to schedule exams, book patient appointments, and place orders directly within the radiology department's master schedule in real-time, to help improve patient satisfaction and efficient use of resources.

Impax Clinical Applications is a series of modules that provide point-of-care access to preintegrated applications, such as thee-dimensional (3D), fusion, digital subtraction angiography, X-ray angiography, X-ray vascular analysis, and nuclear medicine, which are typically available only as third-party integrations. Integration with Impax provides a highly efficient workflow for the radiologist to access an automated, easy-to-use set of tools for comparing images.

Agfa HealthCare's Enterprise Visualization solutions include Impax Data Center, a vendor-neutral enterprise-imaging infrastructure that can serve as the foundation for healthcare enterprises that want to take control of managing and distributing their clinical imaging information using a standards-based infrastructure. Highly scalable and fault-tolerant, this Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) archive system can become an important component of a hospital's archive, access, and disaster recovery strategies.

Impax Mobility Enterprise Clinical Viewer is an ultra-thin, web-deployable enterprise image and result viewer designed for rapid and easy deployment, operating across wide area networks. (The Impax Mobility is manufactured by Medical Insight A/S [Valby, Denmark] as EasyViz).

Impax Mobility uses server-side computing, adaptive streaming, and micro-footprint clients to give access to data and tools on virtually any wired/wireless Microsoft Windows-based personal computer (PC), laptop, tablet, Ultra Mobile PC, or Smartphone device at any location with an internet connection and over any type of network connection. Impax Mobility is a best-of-class enterprise clinical viewer targeted for use by specialists, and referring physicians and provides a rich set of 2D and 3D image review and manipulation tools. As its name implies, Mobility may be launched from the electronic hospital record (EHR) or web portal and is easily deployed to existing PCs that use the Microsoft Windows operating system within or outside the institution. Clinicians will benefit from Impax Mobility as it allows them to manage easily consultation services with colleagues as well as providing bedside education to patients.

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Agfa HealthCare