The Antwerp University Hospital (UZA Belgium) has contracted IBM's long-term business partner I.R.I.S. along with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to deliver several backbone solutions for its electronic patient record (EPR). The project, which will include the digitization of the hospital's extensive medical archive, will increase process efficiency at the hospital's Medical Information department. The preparatory phase of the project is set to start in September, 2006, and UZA will start document scanning by the end of this year. By opting for a push through digitization, the Antwerp University Hospital seeks to offer the best care to patients, streamlining the internal workload and keeping total cost of system ownership down.
Dr. Leon Luyten, head of the UZA's Medical Information department, stresses the need to go digital: "The hospital's total paper use amounts to 12 million pages per year. Our current archiving process is based on microfilm, and this makes indexing and information retrieval a costly process. Additionally, inpatients now spend less time in hospitals, but the total number of patient consultations and treatments per patient has increased. This increases the need to store and distribute patient records faster among the different care providers. To meet these needs, we need to digitize patient records", he says.
I.R.I.S will act as the global system integrator to digitize, integrate and archive the hospitalâs paper medical records into an electronic patient record, and will provide high-end scanners. I.R.I.S. will also make use of IBM hard- and software for content management and long term archiving.
"Innovative changes are shaping the healthcare industry," says Dan Pelino, general manager, IBM Healthcare Life Sciences Industry. "By implementing patient-centric systems that utilize IBM technology, the delivery of patient care can improve significantly and help increase clinician satisfaction while reducing costs. Collaborative projects like this one from IBM and I.R.I.S. allow us to bring solutions to market that are improving the workflow of patient information, a key focus area for the healthcare sector."
The solution will help the hospital to boost its productivity, thanks to more efficient data management and swift delivery of business content. The scalable structure of the solution addresses future system expansion, and its proven technology ensures that data is stored safely, because once a paper document has been scanned, the corresponding digital file cannot be altered.
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About UZA
The Antwerp University Hospital is a university hospital which serves the area around Antwerp. Its 2,500 employees, doctors, medical consultants, paramedics, nurses and administration staff offer patient-centered multidisciplinary care. More than 22,000 inpatients and 19,000 one-day hospitalizations are registered annually. The yearly number of consultations amounts to 330,000, including highly specialized treatments. More information is available at: http://www.uza.be
About I.R.I.S.
Image Recognition Integrated Systems (I.R.I.S.), a Belgian company founded in 1987 and listed on Euronext Brussels (IRI), is a leader in the "Document to Knowledge" market, and provides extremely high-quality solutions for converting paper documents into electronic formats for archiving, storing, managing and sharing digital information. In 2005, the revenue of I.R.I.S. Group was 73,968,432 Euros. I.R.I.S. has more than 300 employees based in Louvain-la-Neuve and Vilvoorde (Belgium), Orly (France), Luxembourg and Delray Beach (USA). More information is available at: http://www.irislink.com