Agfa Healthcare: Fostering Greater Visibility within Healthcare Organizations
The Global Healthcare IT market has seen consistent growth over the last few years and is forecasted to reach USD 280.25 billion by 2021,growing at a CAGR of 15.9 percent. Healthcare IT sector in India how ever is still evolving despite healthcare informatics adoption over a decade ago in some of the leading medical institutes across the country. Talking about Medical Imaging IT solution, in last few years we have witnessed a radical change in the way PACS solutions are defined. PACS until recently was mostly targeted at Radiology departments but now customers are looking at extending these PACS solutions beyond boundaries of Radiology department and include all sort of medical imaging data in the form of jpeg, videos, documents, etc.which are part of patient medical records.PACS solutions are making use of advances incomputational sciences and technology to adopt latest trends such as Big Data, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence to derive more meaningful use and significantly boost workflow efficiency, while at the same time improving care and patient through put.
Despite the role of Healthcare IT in improving the overall cost and quality of patient care in India, healthcare organizations still operate in an increasingly complex environment, where emerging technological advances and increased government mandates are now rapidly transforming this space. Be it in large medical centers or small physicians’ offices, the healthcare IT industry continues to be plagued by a number of challenges in handling increased medical imaging complexities, explosion of digital data, increased diagnostic imaging volume, increased competition, and a dearth of talent, all while facing reduced reimbursements and increased regulatory requirements. As a result, the Indian healthcare IT sector has a dire need for solutions that can help medical practitioners address these challenges whiles imultaneously improving costs, productivity and patient outcomes. Aligning with this need, Agfa Healthcare withits India operations headquartered at Mumbai, endeavors to equip its customers with advanced IT capabilities through a comprehensive suite of Medical Imaging and Healthcare IT solutions.
Incepted in 1867 in Mortsel, Belgium, as Agfa-Gevaert, a Belgian-German multinational corporation, the company is presently a global leader in manufacturing and distribution of digital imaging products and IT solutions. It has established its presence in over 50 countries worldwide. In India, Agfa HealthCare has been serving as a trusted partner to the Healthcare Community for over20 years, as well as a strategic partner of choice for leading healthcare institutes, diagnostic centers and large chains of private hospitals within the country, with a solution suite that spans across Enterprise Imaging, Digital Radiography, Radiology PACS, Diagnostic Imaging, Integrated Care and other Hospital IT services. “Our continuous efforts in educating customers on quality Imaging IT solutions as well as our prestigious implementations at some of the finest medical institutes inthe country, have helped us create a substantial presence in the market,”explains Pranav Shah, Business Development Head - Healthcare IT,Agfa Healthcare.
Developing Solutions with a Care-centric Approach
With an objective to bring modern Enterprise Imaging to optimize clinical workflows and meet the specific needs of clinicians, Agfa
Healthcare adopts a care centric approach to develop solutions that can meet the present and future requirements of Healthcare IT. Recognizing the customers’ need for a single converged platform that can facilitate multi-departmental informatics, PACS and imaging services, VNA, image exchange, mobile display and acquisition, physician collaboration, patient engagement and regional health services, Agfa healthcare has announced the convergence of its solutions into a single Care centric workflow platform -Agfa Health Care Enterprise Imaging. As a Modular and Standards-based solution, this platform improves interoperability and enables a comprehensive patient health record across various departments within a single facility or between multiple facilities. Further more, Agfa’s platform also combines the traditional departmental PACS of Radiology and Cardiology, traditional RIS, voice recognition, VNA and an Enterprise Viewer and mobile platform, into a single scalable application for large healthcare enterprises. On the whole, this framework allows healthcare organizations to address major requisites including Diagnostic quality universal viewing needs, imaging workflows in specialty areas beyond Radiology and Cardiology, enterprise and regional archival with VNA and federated image exchange to enable immediate access to images across multiple sites.“With our care centric workflows and modular approach,we are able to address the different Enterprise Imaging needs of multiple departments on a single platform. We believe that this novel approach to medical imaging will evolve to be the benchmark which others will strive to emulate in the future,” affirms Pranav.
Business Intelligence for Healthcare
In addition to optimizing Imaging IT across hospitals and clinics,Agfa Healthcare endeavors to simplify its customers’IT infrastructure management with a portfolio of Managed and Cloud Services, which has been designed to help organizations simplify functions such as imaging and report management, archiving and distribution, there by enabling them to optimally utilize existing staff, streamline IT infrastructures and reduce over all costs. Agfa Healthcare also facilitates its clients with a business intelligence suite that allows them to derive realtime insights from the clinical data that exists within their enterprise imaging systems. This web-based healthcare business intelligence and analytics platform aggregates data into a single information warehouse and subsequently conveys it to healthcare providers and managers via standard and customized reports as well as live dash boards,there by fostering greater financial and operational efficiency with in clinical environments.
Having developed a wide range of solutions for the complete spectrum of healthcare IT requisites, Agfa Healthcare intends to bring more innovations into healthcare IT to equip clinicians with greater insights,more efficient collaboration and improved data exchange. “We hope to leverage modern technology, industry standards, and workflow interoperability, to deliver solutions that not only empower clinicians but also address IT challenges and help address cost controls in clinical environments,” signs off Pranav.
With our care centric workflows and modular approach,we are able to address the different Enterprise Imaging needs of multiple departments on a single platform
Business Intelligence for Healthcare
In addition to optimizing Imaging IT across hospitals and clinics,Agfa Healthcare endeavors to simplify its customers’IT infrastructure management with a portfolio of Managed and Cloud Services, which has been designed to help organizations simplify functions such as imaging and report management, archiving and distribution, there by enabling them to optimally utilize existing staff, streamline IT infrastructures and reduce over all costs. Agfa Healthcare also facilitates its clients with a business intelligence suite that allows them to derive realtime insights from the clinical data that exists within their enterprise imaging systems. This web-based healthcare business intelligence and analytics platform aggregates data into a single information warehouse and subsequently conveys it to healthcare providers and managers via standard and customized reports as well as live dash boards,there by fostering greater financial and operational efficiency with in clinical environments.
Having developed a wide range of solutions for the complete spectrum of healthcare IT requisites, Agfa Healthcare intends to bring more innovations into healthcare IT to equip clinicians with greater insights,more efficient collaboration and improved data exchange. “We hope to leverage modern technology, industry standards, and workflow interoperability, to deliver solutions that not only empower clinicians but also address IT challenges and help address cost controls in clinical environments,” signs off Pranav.
