Agfa HealthCare announces that the HUS (The hospital district of Helsinki and Uusimaa) will implement Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX 6.5 Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) at its HUS-Röntgen medical imaging centers. This solution will replace the existing IMPAX 5.3 system, and will provide the hospital with the latest clinical tools for the radiology population, with advanced post-processing tools and integrated reporting. In addition IMPAX 6.5 offers a tailored image-distribution solution for the clinicians combined with a scalable archiving solution to meet the high performance requirements required by the clinical community to provide optimal patient care.
Regional care district with national responsibilities
The hospital district of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS), in Southern Finland, comprises 22 hospitals across the five hospital areas of HUCH (the Helsinki University Central Hospital), Hyvinkää, Lohja, Länsi-Uusimaa and Porvoo. HUS is managed by the Joint Authority for the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa, based in Helsinki, and provides healthcare for the almost 1.5 million residents of the region.
HUS-Röntgen is a leading medical imaging provider in Finland. It serves the departments and municipalities of HUS by producing medical imaging for specialist medical care and healthcare. It also serves the private healthcare. In total, HUS-Röntgen has 30 imaging centers, with close to 180 radiologists and 500 technicians.
A single PACS solution
On 12 April 2011, HUS-Röntgen and Agfa HealthCare Finland Oy signed an agreement to upgrade the existing IMPAX 5.3 PACS to the latest IMPAX 6.5 version. The hospital district of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS) has always been a pioneer in the use of technology to meet the challenges of medical imaging in a complex multi-site healthcare environment. The new solution, which integrates with the center's 3rd party Radiology Information System (RIS), includes IMPAX Reporting (integrated speech recognition capabilities), advanced post processing capabilities, IMPAX Business Intelligence, IMPAX Data Center and IMPAX Data Center Viewer.
The implementation project will start immediately, and will be completed before spring 2012. Another system previously used at Länsi-Uusimaa hospital district will be replaced with the shared PACS system during 2012. At that time, all of the separate systems in use by HUS-Röntgen will be replaced by a single IMPAX solution.
New possibilities and solid performance
"The new solution will give us additional integrated imaging possibilities, and even greater system reliability and performance", says Jyrki Putkonen, General Manager at HUS-Röntgen. "This is especially important as the system will increasingly be used by treating and referring physicians across our clinical network, and with the IMPAX, they will all be able to work from the same solution for all their clinical needs."
A leader in regional care solutions in Europe
"This project is a natural evolution for HUS-Röntgen, which has over time upgraded from IMPAX 4.5 to IMPAX 5.3, and now to IMPAX 6.5, with new functionalities" says Hans Vandewyngaerde, Vice President EMEA at Agfa HealthCare. "It demonstrates how we can build strong, lasting relationships based on solid solutions, and shows our capability to provide regional care solutions that our customers rely on."
He continues, "This is the first upgrade of its size in Finland. We have already implemented IMPAX 6 in hospitals in Finland, but the IMPAX 6.5 version is new on the market, showing our commitment to Regional Health."
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 2,948 million euro in 2010.
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 2010 were 1,180 million euro.