Radiology Clinical Module Integrates Clinical Data into PACS

A new clinical module brings disparate clinical data to a radiology desktop system, taking picture archiving and communication system to the next level of clinical care.

Agfa HealthCare (Mortsel, Belgium) has developed Impax Clinical Module, a new software component for the Impax radiology information system/PACS (RIS/PACS) solution that brings disparate clinical data such as lab results, pharmacy, and pathology to the Impax Radiology Desktop.

This new Agfa HealthCare system moves beyond the conventional RIS/PACS focus by gathering clinical information that radiologists need from multiple sources into a single desktop location. Having this information available in real time, from multiple systems with a single log-on, saves the clinician time and could potentially result in improved decisions.

"This patient-centric information workflow is a new level of information integration for radiologists,” said Lenny J. Reznik, director of enterprise imaging and information, Agfa HealthCare Corp., Americas. "Information is available in organizations in non-integrated legacy systems. Our solution integrates the clinical information from these legacy systems into the daily workflow of both protocoling and interpretation.”

The system tags abnormal results transmitted by the modality. The process of having these data on demand in real time has made radiologists comment on the potential to save up to five minutes for every study needed to protocol. Little has been done to bring clinical information to the radiologist until now. Integration of clinical evidence to aid the radiologists with the protocoling and interpretation process is delivered through a zero click context sensitive integration to any clinical system in real-time, a real innovation in radiology workflow.

By talking and listening to radiologists, Agfa has learned that they need pharmacy data (such as medications and allergies), results (such as urinalysis for infection and liver function), lab data (such as creatinine, white blood cell count, and pregnancy test results), as well as surgical and cytology pathology reports. The challenge has been to retrieve that data from multiple clinical systems in real time without separate logins and incorporate that data into the protocoling and interpretation workflow. This module answers this challenge and advances the practice of radiology to new levels.

Agfa HealthCare supplies hospitals and other healthcare centers with state-of-the-art systems for the capturing, processing and managing of diagnostic images and with information technology (IT) systems that integrate information and imaging workflows into the overall hospital operations across departmental disciplines.


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