IOWA HEART CENTER SELECTS HEARTLAB’S ENCOMPASS CARDIAC NETWORK FOR ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY INFORAMTION MANAGEMENT

Practice cites Encompass’s capabilities for digital, online archival storage

• Press release
• WESTERLY
• November 22, 2002 09:45

Heartlab, Inc. today announced that the Des Moines-based Iowa Heart Center.

Heartlab, Inc. today announced that the Des Moines-based Iowa Heart Center has selected the Encompass Cardiac Network to handle the hospital's echocardiography image and information needs. Iowa Heart Center performs more than 17,000 echocardiography studies, 17,000 vascular studies and over 14,000 nuclear cardiac studies per year among its 8 locations.

"With eight full-time offices and 30 outreach sites, the ability to quickly access echo results across the system is critical," said Dr. Richard Marcus, Director of Iowa Heart Center's echocardiography program. "Patients won't necessarily see it, but Encompass will result in better patient care."

Heartlab's Encompass connects to all major cardiac x-ray and ultrasound systems using the industry-standard DICOM communications protocol, creating a central repository of digital images from multiple modalities together with the associated physician findings reports. Using Heartlab's network-connected diagnostic review stations, clinicians can instantaneously access several thousand diagnostic cardiac catheterization or echocardiography cases stored on the Encompass Enterprise Server, and access in less than 30 seconds cases stored on the Encompass DVD Image Archive.

Heartlab's DVD archive is ten times faster than competing technologies, with scaleable capacity to store from 5,000 to more than 100,000 cases on site. In addition, secure LAN, WAN or Internet access is also available so clinicians can reference patient data from any PC with a Web browser.

"It's not uncommon for our patients to see us in several clinic locations," notes Dr. Marcus. "We can use Encompass' remote accessing capabilities to create significant efficiencies, particularly in communicating test results to patients and their primary care physicians."

According to Mathew Aitkenhead, Vice President of Technical Operations for Heartlab, "Part of Iowa Heart's rigorous evaluation process was to look at the ability of our clinical information system to support the institution's specific reporting needs." Aitkenhead adds, "Another critical requirement was that Heartlab support Iowa Heart's central IT infrastructure including their storage area network (SAN). We were able to meet their needs in this and other areas."

Iowa Heart Center, founded in 1970, is one of the nation's premier cardiovascular medicine practices. The Center's cardiologists, surgeons and staff are committed to providing world-class heart care, research and prevention services to its patients and their families.

Founded in 1994 and based in Westerly, RI, Heartlab, Inc. specializes in the development of cardiac imaging software and the integration of cardiac imaging network systems. Today, Heartlab's networks are installed in more than 135 of the nation's leading heart centers, and the company's cardiac archiving systems manage a volume of more than 900,000 patient cases with an installed DVD-R storage capacity of 1.8 million exams. For more information about Heartlab, visit www.heartlab.com or call (401) 596-0592.