Agfa HealthCare's solution consolidates clinical imaging data, providing access to the longitudinal patient imaging record at the point-of-care.
Mortsel, Belgium / Greenville, SC (U.S.) - April 4, 2009 - 10:00 am EDT
Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions, announces today that Wichita Clinic of Wichita, Kansas is deploying the company's IMPAX® Mobility(TM) with its IMPAX Data Center enterprise medical archive. The IMPAX Data Center system, which manages diagnostic imaging access and distribution across the enterprise, provides a robust and flexible image management and storage solution for large, multi-site and multi-facility healthcare domains.
Wichita Clinic selected IMPAX Data Center in 2008 to help consolidate data from disparate multi-vendor Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) and clinical systems onto a single point of storage. The IMPAX Data Center solution supports DICOM 3.0 standards-based medical images and diagnostic results including DICOM-encapsulated images, reports, waveforms and .pdfs. IMPAX Mobility is a viewing component that can make the clinical data available to referring clinicians in a single longitudinal patient view.
IMPAX Mobility is a viewer application that uses server-side computing, adaptive streaming, and micro-footprint clients that don't depend on Sun Microsystems Java, Microsoft .NET or Adobe Flash Player applications to give access to data and tools on virtually any device and at any secure location and over any type of network connection. IMPAX Mobility is a best-in-class enterprise clinical viewer for use by referring physicians and provides a rich set of 2D and 3D image review and manipulation tools. As its name implies, IMPAX Mobility may be launched from the EMR or Web Portal and is easily deployed to virtually any wired/wireless Microsoft Windows-based PC, laptop, tablet, Ultra Mobile PC, or Smartphone device.
IMPAX Mobility was designed and manufactured by Medical Insight as "EasyViz" specifically for use by referring physicians who are typically using older PCs over local or wide area networks. It is primarily for healthcare organizations that want to offer referring physicians with a longitudinal patient record of images and reports, providing a rich view of a patient's prior imaging studies over time and from multi-modalities. This information can contribute to a more confident diagnosis and enhance the delivery of healthcare. IMPAX Mobility allows healthcare networks to stay competitive by offering quality tools, services, and turnaround times to their referral base.
To successfully leverage either departmental PACS or vendor-neutral enterprise archives, effective enterprise visualization for caregivers outside of the department from which data originated is required. Healthcare providers typically face multiple deployment and usability challenges with traditional clinical workstations found within and outside of the institution:
Older client-server architectures require local processing of downloaded image data and sometimes Microsoft ActiveX controls, which may cause security concerns. This has negative implications on the client-side: heavy client hardware, extensive support and maintenance of the client application, and required strong network connectivity from servers to clients.
"IMPAX Mobility provides our clinicians with a longitudinal view of their patients' imaging records, precisely what is needed to aid a confident diagnosis," said Larry Leopold, Manager of Radiology, of Wichita Clinic. "The solution enables true enterprise visualization both within the hospital and for remote, referring physicians, empowering them with the priors they need, which helps to reduce the unnecessary expense of repeat studies. We are pleased to provide this time saving service and quick turnaround to our community."
"Agfa HealthCare delivers enterprise visualization, enabling access to the edge of the enterprise. Our innovative solution can take the complexity and risk out of enterprise diagnostic image and report distribution," said Lenny J. Reznik, Director of Enterprise Imaging, Agfa HealthCare, U.S. "Healthcare professionals rely on access to images and information for the clinical information they need to deliver the best possible patient care. Physical constraints of sending large data sets across local area, wide area, or even wireless networks are no longer a problem with IMPAX Mobility."
