Agfa to integrate radiology and PACS in 15 Norwegian hospitals
19 July 2006 Mortsel, Belgium. The Western Norway Regional Health
Authority, Helse Vest, has selected Agfa HealthCare, along with partner
eCare, to integrate patient radiology information from 15 private and public
hospitals in the region, which together perform some 800,000 radiology
examinations per year.
The Vestlandet region is one of the five major regions of Norway.It has a
scattered population with many small hospitals and limited healthcare
resources. With a clear need for efficient cross-enterprise solutions, Helse
Vest turned to Agfa HealthCare to integrate the various existing
RIS/PACS (radiology information system/picture archiving and communications
system) solutions, which are supplied by six different vendors.
Radiologists in the region will be able to order diagnostic services from
remote hospitals (RIS to RIS) and receive the reports in their local RIS.
They will also be able to access historical patient information such as
existing RIS orders and reports and related PACS images, available in other
RIS/PACS systems in the region.
The solution will deliver vendor-independent cross-system communication
using standards such as HL7 and KITH XML (CEN), DICOM and XDS. Once the
implementation is complete, patients in the Vestlandet region can be
referred to any hospital and be assured that radiologists have a complete
radiology record at hand. The patient radiology records that accompany the
images will be made available via InfoBroker, developed by Stockholm-based
eCare. InfoBroker is a clinical communication application which will provide
the radiologist with an on-screen toolbox offering access to the patient's
historical records from any of the region's healthcare sites, stored on the
various RIS/PACS systems in the regional network. The links between the
images and patient information are provided automatically and are adapted
each time patient information is changed in a RIS/PACS connected to the
InfoBroker. The InfoBroker toolbox also provides RIS to RIS ordering
functionality, for an efficient, secure and auditable workflow. Under the
terms of the Helse Vest agreement, Agfa HealthCare will provide the services
(project management, installation, training, implementation and support) for
the major part of the delivery. Agfa HealthCare will begin taking hospitals
online in November this year and full integration is expected to be
completed by the end of spring, 2007. To top
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