Eastern Maine Medical Center purchases Agfa's solutions for creating an imaging RHIO

The first site beyond EMMC's corporate affiliates to go live will be St Joseph Hospital, in Bangor, in mid-April, with other sites to go live throughout 2006. EMMC's plan is to roll out an integrated imaging solution throughout the eastern Maine area including both affiliated and non-affiliated facilities. Ultimately, up to 15 separate facilities within EMMC's 300-mile referral region will be running Agfa's virtual RIS/PACS solution.

 

"We chose Agfa HealthCare because we wanted to take advantage of the value delivered by a single-vendor, integrated solution," said Deborah Sanford, RN, M.S., Patient Care Administrator, EMMC. "With the addition of the Agfa's RIS and the MPI, EMMC broadens its commitment to bringing the very best and most efficient technological advancements to our referring hospitals and the patients we serve together," she added. The system will enable providers to send locally collected images to centralized radiology and other clinical specialists for consultation. It also will enable specialists across the region to access other relevant images of patients, no matter where the studies were generated.

 

Agfa's IMPAX Enterprise RIS delivers important, measurable financial and clinical benefits to the Radiology business line by streamlining workflow processes for all department personnel, improving patient experience and flow through the department and delivering results to clinical stakeholders across the enterprise quickly and easily.

Enterprise-wide PACS solutions have been limited by disparate patient ID domains at individual IDN sites. Agfa's IMPAX MPI, integrated with Initiate Identity HubTM software from Initiate Systems, addresses this by using sophisticated algorithms to cross-reference patient identifiers, thereby unifying the management and delivery of patient imaging studies across these IDN member facilities.

 

"By building decentralized yet interconnected patient databases, and making the flow of information from site to site seamless, RHIOs will decrease healthcare costs and improve patient care and patient satisfaction. EMMC will see improved diagnostic imaging services across their entire regional healthcare community," predicted David Chambers, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Agfa HealthCare, Americas. "At the same time, the IMPAX integrated solution will help improve workflow efficiency and improve the delivery of patient care. This is particularly important in areas where patients, because of health, travel, weather or other considerations, cannot always travel to the facility where their initial exams were performed," Chambers added.

 

 

Initiate Systems, Inc. is the leading provider of software for companies, organizations and government agencies that want to create the most complete, real-time views of people, households and organizations from data dispersed across multiple application systems and databases. Initiate Identity Hub(TM) software is more accurate, scalable, rapidly deployed and widely used than any other customer data integration and enterprise master person index solution. Many organizations in the financial services, government, healthcare, hospitality and retail sectors are using Initiate(TM) software to deliver the right data at the right time to all critical touch points. Initiate's proven experience makes it uniquely qualified to enable strategic initiatives that allow organizations to increase revenue and efficiency, and reduce operating costs and risks.

 

The Agfa-Gevaert Group is one of the worlds leading imaging and information technology companies. Agfa develops, manufactures and markets analog and digital systems for the graphics industry, the healthcare sector and specific industrial applications. Agfa's headquarters are in Mortsel, Belgium. The company is active in 40 countries and has agents in another 100 countries throughout the world. The Agfa-Gevaert Group achieved a turnover of 3,762 million euro in 2004.

Agfa's HealthCare business group supplies hospitals and other healthcare centers with state-of-the-art systems for the capturing, processing and managing of diagnostic images and with IT solutions that integrate the imaging workflow into the overall hospital operations across departmental disciplines. In addition, Agfa is a leader in the fast growing market of IT systems that span the entire healthcare enterprise and through which healthcare facilities become more efficient and effective, with improved patient outcomes.
For more information on Agfa, visit www.agfa.com.
1US$ = 0.804281 Euro

 

Agfa, the Agfa rhombus, Initiate Identity Hub and IMPAX are trademarks of Agfa-Gevaert N.V., Belgium or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

Global PR Manager HealthCare

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e-mail: geertruidesmet@agfapress.com

 

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