Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions, announces the release of TalkStation™ 4.0, its integrated speech recognition workflow solution for radiology reporting today. The new software platform includes features that improve physician efficiency, enhance speech recognition, and provide tighter integration with the company's IMPAX® radiology Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS).

CAST PHARMA, a premier European 3D pharmaceutical and biomedical animation production company, has announced the opening of the new office in Ballerup, Denmark. This new office will allow Cast Pharma to meet the growing demand in the Northern Europe pharmaceutical market and to improve services to existing clients.

The European Investment Fund (EIF), the European Union's specialized financial body for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), has provided over 1 bn EUR of guarantees for SMEs through the European Union's Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) via 9 intermediaries in 6 countries, 1 year after being awarded the management of the EU programme.

Asklepios, Germany's largest chain of private clinics and medavis GmbH, a leading provider of medical information systems, have signed a framework contract to equip six Asklepios clinics in Hamburg with medavis' radiology information system. The conversion to medavis RIS as the central radiology information system for the Hamburg clinics will be carried out in the course of the “OneIT“ project for the standardisation of the entire IT infrastructure.

Carestream Health has won orders to supply a total of eleven DR systems to Greater Glasgow & Clyde and Fife Health Boards, building further on the company's recent successes in Europe. Greater Glasgow & Clyde Health Board are currently completing the building of two new, purpose designed Ambulatory Care Hospitals in and around Glasgow - the Victoria Infirmary on the south side of the city and Stobhill Hospital on the north.

Excluding currency effects, sales decreased 8.6 percent to 1,223 million Euro. The traditional film segment continued its market-driven decline. In the second half of the year, Agfa HealthCare's sales figures were affected by the economic slowdown as some care organizations are postponing their investments in Enterprise IT, Imaging IT and Computed Radiography (CR) equipment.

eHealth specialist InterComponentWare (ICW) has successfully demonstrated its technological leadership in healthcare IT connectivity at the IHE North American Connectathon, the only large-scale interoperability testing event for the healthcare industry. For three years in a row, the interoperability of ICW's Master Patient Index (ICW MPI) has been designated as IHE conformant.