IT System Used in Belgian Hospital Studies

A series of pilot projects has been designed for a comprehensive enterprise healthcare information technology (IT) system, which has recently been installed in three Belgian hospitals.

With these pilot projects, Agfa HealthCare (Mortsel, Belgium) becomes the first to provide Belgian hospitals with an integrated platform in which clinical and administrative and workflow oriented systems converge in a patient-centric form. Three hospitals--Imelda (Bonheiden), Bois de l'Abbaye (Seraing), and AZ Groeninge (Kortrijk)--will be the first sites to implement the Orbis IT system in Belgium.

The Orbis IT system is made up of over 70 modules that manage information and workflows for healthcare delivery, including admission, diagnosis, treatment, financial, billing, and logistics. Orbis, designed by doctors and nurses, adapts the entire clinical workflow to the needs of individual hospitals and helps healthcare professionals in decision-making by providing real-time access to information, images, statistics, and benchmark practices. Hospitals that have implemented Orbis improved patient care and hospital efficiency, as proven by more than 700 installations across Europe where Orbis is utilized daily by 400,000 medical professionals.

"Healthcare in Belgium is very complex, with different languages, cultures, and a multi-faceted healthcare system. Orbis is successfully operational in Germany and Austria and will soon in be implemented in France, where Agfa already has a significant customer base for enterprise systems. Implementing Orbis in the multi-cultural Belgian healthcare environment with an experience on practical implementation of clinical pathways, will demonstrate its appropriateness for hospitals around the world,” explained Philippe Houssiau, president, Agfa HealthCare.

The start of the pilot phase is scheduled for the end of 2006. In Belgium, Orbis will be commercially deployed in 2007.

Agfa's HealthCare business group supplies hospitals and other healthcare centers with advanced systems for the capturing, processing, and managing of diagnostic images and with IT systems that integrate imaging workflow into the overall hospital operations across departmental disciplines.



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