Agfa HealthCare has signed an agreement for the first Enterprise Imaging platform to be implemented in the UK with City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust. The agreement includes the integration and installation of the Enterprise Imaging platform - the first in the UK - as well as an upgrade of the Trust's existing PACS solution. The contract was signed at the end of November 2014, and implementation began in January 2015.
Long-term solution for managing imaging data
City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust provides acute services across 863 beds. The Trust provides a wide range of hospitals services along with an increasing range of more specialised services to patients outside of the area. The Trust also provides a substantial range of community based services, particularly within Family Care and Therapy Services.
The Trust first deployed Agfa HealthCare's PACS solution in 2007. As part of a new 7-year contract with Agfa HealthCare, the Trust wanted to include an upgraded platform. In addition, the Trust wanted to add a long-term archive solution including a vendor-neutral archive (VNA) and a replicated, high availability (HA) solution for PACS & Enterprise Imaging.
Freeing imaging from information silos
Agfa HealthCare designed an imaging platform to the Trust's technical and clinical requirements. This platform centers around Enterprise Imaging, a comprehensive enterprise-class imaging clinical information system that helps hospitals free medical images and information from its information silos, enabling the meaningful capture, storing, exchange of and access to medical images directly through the EPR.
The agreement also includes the latest version of IMPAX, plus Enterprise Imaging XERO Viewer and VNA. The zero-footprint Viewer enables stakeholders to view their relevant images using only a commonly-used Internet browser and a modest network connection. Enterprise Imaging VNA will act as a long-term, vendor-neutral repository for data and images. Hardware has been supplied by Hewlett Packard combining SMAHP 3PAR NAS servers with dual data center configuration for high availability and business continuity.
Following radiology and cardiology image data, a range of other 'imaging rich' departments will be added to the Enterprise Imaging platform over 3 years. These include Cardiology ECGs, Ophthalmology, Medical Photography, Speech and Language Therapy (SALT), Obstetrics and Gynaecology, ICCU, Endoscopy, Urology, Point of Care, Laparoscopic and Theatre Monitoring. The medium term plan is to enable and automate the visualisation of all these departments imaging embedded within the hospital's MEDITECH fully integrated EPR.
Visually enabling the hospital for better patient care
"Having worked with Agfa HealthCare's solutions for many years, we are confident in working closer together, as we know they share with us a common vision and goal: visually enabling our hospitals in order to deliver improved patient care," says Andy Hart, Director of IT and Information Governance, City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust.
"As a valued customer, we are absolutely delighted that City Hospitals Sunderland has become the first UK site to implement our full Enterprise Imaging platform and look forward to the next phase of our long standing relationship. Working together with the Trust we aim to provide a platform that meets and exceeds their business and clinical needs to visually enable the Trust's EPR with all types of imaging data, eliminating information bottlenecks and silos," says Grant Witheridge, General Manager of Agfa HealthCare UK.
Related news articles:
- Agfa HealthCare's Profile
About City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust
City Hospitals Sunderland provides a wide range of hospital services to a local community of around 340,000 residents along with an increasing range of more specialised services provided to patients outside this area, in some cases to a population as great as 860,000. In addition, it provides a substantial range of community based services, particularly within Family Care and Therapy Services. The Trust has around 863 acute beds, an annual income of £336.37m, non-current assets of £204.96m and employs just over 5000 members of staff.
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 2,620 million euro in 2014.
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 2014 were 1,069 million euro.