At HIMSS15, Agfa HealthCare “Envisions the future of Care” as Enterprise Imaging becomes central to advancing value-based care strategies

- Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging suite addresses clinical and economic data demands as hospitals and health systems seek to realize value in all care settings and situations - Enterprise Imaging for Radiology and Enterprise Imaging for Cardiology bring the full power of enterprise imaging to image-intensive diagnostics - Recently launched integrated care Portal and enhancements to its Real-Time Location System (RTLS) demonstrate Agfa HealthCare’s commitment to empowering the delivery of high quality, efficient, and cost-effective medical care

With value-based care as its central mission for 2015 and beyond, Agfa HealthCare will unveil enhancements to its suite of technologies during HIMSS15 that are designed to integrate multiple points of data consolidation and access with its Enterprise Imaging platform. The new capabilities will be on display at the HIMSS15 Annual Conference & Exhibition, April 12-16, 2015 in Chicago.

Developed as a care-centric, standards-based workflow platform, Agfa HealthCare Enterprise Imaging improves interoperability and enables hospital groups, Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs), and public/private health information exchanges (HIEs) to create and efficiently share unified patient records containing both images and textual information within the EHR. Since launching its consolidated platform strategy at RSNA 2014, Agfa HealthCare has introduced several technology advancements, including Enterprise Imaging for Cardiology and Enterprise Imaging for Radiology, and its integrated care Portal, that are designed to enable efficient access to and management of actionable medical data. During HIMSS15, Agfa HealthCare will be showcasing these technologies, as well as enhancements to its Real Time Location Solution (RTLS), to guide hospitals and health systems as they “envision the future of care”.

“Value-based care has become the rallying cry for the U.S. healthcare industry, and all participants in our health system are striving to enable the delivery of high quality, efficient, and cost-effective medical care throughout the care continuum,” stated James Jay, Global Vice President, Imaging IT, Agfa HealthCare. “As we envision the future of care, Agfa HealthCare’s mission is to bring value to the healthcare system through advanced technologies that enable quality care through quality data. The launch of our enhanced Enterprise Imaging platform is central to this mission as it provides hospitals and networks with an incrementally deployed, value-based diagnostic and reference image management solution designed to improve collaboration across disciplines, reduce costs, and increase operational efficiency.”

Envision the Future of Care – Enterprise Imaging
Agfa HealthCare Enterprise Imaging is designed to offer hospitals and networks a long-term, value-based solution that aligns with their EHR strategy by enabling multi-disciplines, including Cardiology, Radiology, Ophthalmology, and Gastroenterology, to work and collaborate within the same imaging system. Developed as a care-centric, standards-based workflow platform, Agfa HealthCare Enterprise Imaging improves interoperability and enables hospital groups, Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs), or public and private health information exchanges (HIEs) to create and efficiently share unified patient records containing both images and textual information within the EHR.

Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging Radiology and Cardiology Suites are designed specifically for the high-volume imaging needs and are equipped with new features and options including enhanced functionalities for collaboration, reporting, advanced visualization, and offsite hosted deployment. However, the most significant benefit of the Radiology and Cardiology Suites is that each solution is built on Agfa HealthCare’s comprehensive Enterprise Imaging platform, giving hospitals the flexibility to extend functionality from radiology or cardiology to the full hospital enterprise, or to provide image workflows to other multispecialty departments throughout their network, without having to migrate to a new solution.

Jay continued, “While image management is a central component of Agfa HealthCare’s growth strategy, it is not the only ‘intelligent data’ challenge that Agfa HealthCare innovation is addressing. At HIMSS15, we are introducing several enhancements to our suite of technologies that, on their own or integral to our Enterprise Imaging solution, will give hospitals and health systems the ability to realize significant value across the patient care continuum by improving access to information to advance patient satisfaction and the delivery of care.”

Envision the Future of Care – Agfa HealthCare Portal
Recently introduced, Agfa HealthCare’s Portal is designed to give a patient-centric overview of patient information from different sources, to different stakeholders in the patient’s care, whether inside or outside the hospital. With the Portal, the stakeholders involved in a patient's care - physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, home care providers, the patients themselves - have easy and quick access to the patient's health information. The 'patient view' functionality allows patients to both download and upload their own health information, while the 'clinical view' gives physicians access to aggregated patient health data, for more informed decision making along the patient care continuum.

Envision the Future of Care – Real Time Location System (RTLS)
Supporting health providers’ utilization of evidence-based practices to improve quality and productivity, Agfa HealthCare will highlight its Real Time Location System (RTLS) at HIMSS15. The RTLS solution delivers affordable information to assist in developing and fostering efficiency and patient-safety initiatives. A commonly reported use of RTLS is to help control Hospital Acquired Infections. In addition, the Agfa HealthCare RTLS solution provides an integrated information system to gather data, enabling hospitals to improve best practices in areas such as outpatient surgery center productivity, creating a surgery- sterile processing department closed loop, rental savings, theft/shrinkage reduction, asset management, and workflow optimization/patient satisfaction.

Agfa HealthCare HIMSS Educational Breakfast
Addressing the multiple opportunities to improve value-based care, Agfa HealthCare will be sponsoring the HIMSS Enterprise Imaging Educational Breakfast "Realizing Value with a Holistic Enterprise Imaging Strategy” on Monday, April 13, 2015 from 6:45am to 7:45am Cheryl Petersilge, MD, MBA, Imaging Institute Medical Director, Clinical Systems Office & MyPractice Imaging, Cleveland Clinic, and, Kimberly Garriott, Sr. Project Manager, MyPractice Imaging, Cleveland Clinic will be the featured speakers in an exclusive, invitation-only thought leadership program focused on lessons learned deploying enterprise-wide, patient-centric image accessibility via the EHR.