Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of IT enabled clinical workflow and diagnostic imaging solutions, today announces that the Heilig Hartziekenhuis Mol hospital in Belgium has awarded it a significant contract to unify its medical workflow through the company's ORBIS(TM) solution. ORBIS is Agfa HealthCare's integrated Hospital and Clinical Information System (HIS/CIS), specifically designed to manage the entire patient-centric information flow through all hospital departments. The implementation of ORBIS is expected to start in April 2007. Agfa HealthCare's ORBIS solution will provide the Heilig Hartziekenhuis Mol hospital with a comprehensive view of clinical information processes, including medical and nursing records, scheduling, order management, results reporting and medication workflow. The hospital has worked with Agfa HealthCare since 2003, successfully using its Picture Archiving and Communications System / Radiology Information System (PACS/RIS) solution.
The Heilig Hartziekenhuis Mol hospital's nine-month decision process involved information scouting, several medical workgroup meetings, and an elaborate request for proposals, as well as a field visit to the Troisdorf hospital near Bonn, Germany and interviews with users. "With ORBIS, we will be able to address the needs of our entire healthcare enterprise," states Benny Peeters, Heilig Hartziekenhuis Mol's ICT Manager. "We have chosen ORBIS because it offers us a complete hospital-wide solution, which allows us to integrate advanced functionalities more easily. Agfa HealthCare's vendor neutral solution was the ideal choice for us as it allows us to integrate our existing solutions with ORBIS."
"Supporting our customers over a longer period, by helping them enhance and improve their overall solutions offering, is a key priority for Agfa HealthCare," states Hans Vandewyngaerde, Cluster Manager Benelux & France. "We have always treasured our positive relationship with Heilig Hartziekenhuis Mol and we look forward to further enhancing and evolving our leading solutions with them, for the benefit of the hospital and its patients."
Heilig Hartziekenhuis Mol is a mid-size hospital, which provides a comprehensive range of health services to the eastern 'Kempen' region of Belgium's Antwerp province. The hospital has positioned itself as a modern healthcare provider, applying significant resources to staff education and advanced infrastructure. Its 500 staff members and 60 doctors manage approximately 18,000 hospital stays per year.
"Teaming up with a provider of solutions that we know to be of high quality will help us to position our hospital at the forefront of modern medicine in our region," ICT Manager Benny Peeters concludes. "We were the first hospital in the region to implement PACS, and now ORBIS will help us to strengthen our pioneering approach. We are proud to be among the first hospitals to implement the ORBIS platform, adapted to the specific healthcare needs in our country."
About ORBIS
ORBIS enhances the quality of patient care and provides fast and complete availability of patients' histories, including all images and data. Accurate real-time patient data and histories will be available to authorized nursing, technical and medical staff, allowing for quicker and more informed diagnoses and treatments. The modular design of ORBIS allows for a non-disruptive implementation at the pace of each individual institution. Over 20 percent of the software developers of ORBIS have a clinical background in order to provide a solution that is tailored to the medical processes.
In total, almost 1,000 dedicated ORBIS staff at Agfa HealthCare develop innovating ideas into state-of-the-art solutions and services which help solving the major challenges in today's healthcare environment:
- to reduce cost
- to increase productivity
- to improve the quality of care
Today, over 750 customers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Italy have Agfa HealthCare's ORBIS installed in their facility totaling over 400,000 users. Preparations for expansion in other geographies are ongoing.
About Agfa HealthCare
Agfa HealthCare, a member of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, is a leading provider of IT-enabled clinical workflow and image management solutions, and state-of-the-art systems for capturing, processing and printing images in hospitals and healthcare facilities. The company has over a century of experience in diagnostic imaging and has been a pioneer on the healthcare IT market since the early 1990s. Agfa HealthCare today employs 5,700 staff members, with sales offices and representatives in over 100 markets worldwide. Sales for Agfa HealthCare in 2006 were 1452 million Euro, accounting for 43% of total group sales.
For more info on Agfa please visit: www.agfa.com