Agfa HealthCare has signed a new, 10-year contract with The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, under which the Trust's Agfa HealthCare IMPAX picture archiving and communication system (PACS) will be replaced with its Enterprise Imaging for Radiology Suite, including the XERO zero-footprint viewer technology. Enterprise Imaging for Radiology will enable greater connectivity and collaboration between the Trust's two main hospital sites as well as with the Trust's outlying clinics.
Collaboration across multiple sites
The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust provides acute hospital care for almost 500,000 people from Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin and mid Wales. Its two main hospital sites are the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital in Shrewsbury and the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, which together count just over 800 beds. The Trust also has several outlying outreach and community clinics. It employs over 5000 people, including 571 physicians and dentists (FTE), 1383 nursing and midwifery staff (FTE) and 611 scientific, technical and therapies staff (FTE).
Previously, the Trust implemented Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX PACS. The PACS currently contains over 78 million images and almost 3 million studies.
A single, sophisticated platform and VNA
To increase collaboration between its sites and to realise cost savings, the Trust has signed a new 10-year contract with Agfa HealthCare to replace IMPAX with the Enterprise Imaging for Radiology platform. The agreement was signed in December 2015.
Enterprise Imaging for Radiology takes a distinct new approach to imaging management by delivering a completely unified imaging platform that provides PACS, reporting, advanced image processing and integration of clinical information all in one sophisticated solution. Powerful, seamless and highly intuitive, it optimizes productivity for users, while offering a low total cost of ownership for IT and management.
Central to the platform is the vendor neutral archive (VNA), which delivers an intelligent storage solution that provides a genuine cross-enterprise imaging solution. All images can be indexed, stored and retrieved through a number of applications. This delivers greater flexibility and makes images available to anyone with access and permissions to see them. It helps reduce silos of information and provides a more complete picture of the patient.
More information for decision-making
The Enterprise Imaging for Radiology suite for The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust also includes the XERO viewer, which provides secure web-based access to DICOM and non-DICOM imaging data from different departments and multiple sources, in one view, to authorized users inside and outside of the hospitals who need it. This zero-download viewer reduces IT complexity while facilitating clinical collaboration and mobility.
The new contract further includes Agfa HealthCare's Business Intelligence application, which enables the Trust to access key operational information and to provide the mandatory management reports required by the government. Ad hoc reports will support the Trust in decision-making on best practices and efforts to increase efficiency, amongst others.
Enhanced collaboration and productivity
"Enterprise Imaging for Radiology fits in very well with our strategy, and will allow us to enhance collaboration between our sites," comments Debbie Jones, Support Service Care Group Director of The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. "Multi-disciplinary team meetings will be more productive, effective and inclusive, and clinicians will be able to join in remotely. Enterprise Imaging for Radiology is an excellent solution for us as a multi-site trust."
"We are very pleased to be able to extend our relationship with the Trust, supporting them with a solution that enables the improvement of the patient experience and the delivery of clinical care, while allowing significant efficiency gains," says Grant Witheridge, Managing Director UK & Ireland, Agfa HealthCare. "Enterprise Imaging for Radiology supports image sharing and consolidates images from a broad range of 'ologies', and is scaleable to support the Trust's growing needs, now and in the future."
Related news articles:
- Agfa HealthCare's Profile
About Agfa
The Agfa-Gevaert Group is one of the world’s leading companies in imaging and information technology. Agfa develops manufactures and markets analogue and digital systems for the printing industry (Agfa Graphics), for the healthcare sector (Agfa HealthCare), and for specific industrial applications (Agfa Materials). Agfa is headquartered in Mortsel, Belgium. The company is present in 40 countries and has agents in another 100 countries around the globe. The Agfa-Gevaert Group achieved a turnover of 2,865 million euro in 2013.
About Agfa HealthCare
Agfa HealthCare, a member of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, is a leading global provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions. The company has nearly a century of healthcare experience and has been a pioneer on the healthcare IT market since the early 1990's. Today Agfa HealthCare designs, develops and delivers state-of-the-art systems for capturing, managing and processing diagnostic images and clinical/administrative information for hospitals and healthcare facilities, as well as contrast media solutions to enable effective medical imaging results. The company has sales offices and agents in over 100 markets worldwide. Sales for Agfa HealthCare in 2013 were 1,160 million euro.