Agfa HealthCare signs agreement with multi-site Antwerp hospital group ZNA to deliver its advanced IMPAX™ 6 solution as a service

New solution to meet the integrated needs of ZNA’s 9 hospital sites

• Press release
• Mortsel, Belgium
• May 08, 2009 11:00

Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions, announces today it has signed an agreement with ZNA (Ziekenhuis Netwerk Antwerpen - Hospital Network Antwerp) for the delivery of its IMPAX 6TM image management solution to support and centralize the diagnostic and clinical imaging needs of its nine sites across the city. As part of the agreement, Agfa HealthCare will act as the customer’s key application service provider (ASP) for medical imaging, providing remote solution hosting and management at its advanced server facilities in Mortsel.

The solution will meet the imaging needs of 37 radiologists, a nuclear medicine specialist and over 600 clinicans across the ZNA facilities. ZNA is Belgium's largest hospital group, and one of Europe's top ten hospitals in size, counting a total of nine sites, around 2500 beds and serves over 1 million inhabitants in the Antwerp region. The hospital group manages over 400,000 radiology exams annually.

Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX 6 is a web-deployable solution that provides the necessary tools and customizable workflows that help overcome the physical barriers of complex multi-site environments. The solution is a single diagnostic image-management and storage system that improves the planning, capture, interpretation, distribution, and archiving of diagnostic images, allowing a virtual view of a patient's imaging record across the hospital enterprise.

"We were looking for a solution which would work across departments and disciplines, delivering improvements in our overal operational efficiencies, solve communications issues, and serve the needs of our image intensive departments across all facilities", explains Bruno Holthof, CEO of ZNA. "On top of that we were also looking for a partner we could rely on to not only deliver the solution, but also to maintain it, as well as ensure that all users are properly trained and supported over the coming years."

Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX will integrate all existing radiology solutions at ZNA into its centralized workflow including an existing RIS/Speech from Agfa HealthCare, an Electronic Patient Record solution and other IT sub-sytsems. As part of the agreement, the company will also integrate a number of Agfa HealthCare's advanced clinical applications into the solution, including 3D rendering, orthopaedic and nuclear medicine software.

"Agfa HealthCare is proud to have been selected by a hospital of such high standing, with very high expectations from its solution providers", explains Hans Vandewyngaerde, Vice President Region Europe at Agfa HealthCare. "The fact that they have not only relied on us to install the solution, but to also maintain and support it at our facilities in Mortsel, is a clear indication of the trust ZNA has put in us, and we will deliver on that trust."