Data Center Provides Next-Generation Scalability, Virtualization to Centrally Manage Medical Images

A new version of a picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) and storage vendor-agnostic data center is conformant with Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM), HL [health level]7 and IHE [Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise], to support maximizing use of existing imaging systems and promoting vendor neutrality.

The system supports healthcare community collaboration, with real-time access to patient images and data from different facilities. Moreover, it consolidates and allows access of relevant patient-centric imaging data to the clinician at the point of care.

Agfa HealthCare’s (Morsel, Belgium) Impax Data Center (IDC) 3.0 is a new version of Agfa HealthCare’s enterprise medical imaging repository, also called a vendor-neutral archive (VNA), is PACS and storage vendor-agnostic. New to IDC 3.0 is support for VMware virtualization to deploy the Impax Data Center on any VMware-compliant platform. With its conformance to medical standards such as DICOM and HL7 and the IHE technical framework, IDC 3.0 makes it possible for hospitals to distribute clinical data from different departments through any electronic medical record or electronic health record (EMR/EHR), using the facility’s existing solutions.

By providing a single point of storage for patient imaging data, IDC 3.0 enables hospitals of all sizes, as well as hospital groups, to consolidate imaging data from radiology PACS, cardiology PACS, and multi-disciplinary imaging solutions into a single, centralized, DICOM repository. Tightly integrated Agfa HealthCare Xero viewer software technology provides unified clinical viewing of images and reports across the enterprise and beyond via popular browsers without any further client download. Xero is an integrated zero download universal clinical imaging viewer with outstanding conformance to the IHE technical framework. IDC 3.0 and the Xero viewer form two pillars of Agfa HealthCare’s enterprise clinical imaging strategy.

The VNA solution also supports collaboration within healthcare communities, by providing real-time access to a patient’s complete medical record--including diagnostic imaging--regardless of the facility in which the patient was treated. As part of the Health Information Exchange (HIE), IDC 3.0 consolidates hospitals’ archives, enabling cost-effective management of patient data in a secure and controlled environment.

By allowing sharing of data from different departments and facilities, IDC 3.0 enables improved continuity of care and more informed clinical decision- making. Eliminating the need for repeated and unnecessary exams through greater information sharing allows healthcare providers to reduce both cost and the amount of radiation to which a patient is exposed.

“Hospitals today are very concerned about vendor lock-in, and the risk of having their data essentially held hostage by their vendor,” commented Koen Meeusen, global solution manager IDC, Agfa HealthCare. “IDC 3.0 follows Agfa HealthCare’s philosophy that patient data belong to the patient, and that the healthcare institution is the ‘gatekeeper’--not the informatics vendor. That’s why we added new archival storage plug-in features to our PACS-agnostic solution. IDC is highly conformant to DICOM, HL7, and the IHE technical framework, so not only can we preserve our clients’ existing systems--we can actually enhance them.”

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