Agfa HealthCare: Frost & Sullivan Whitepaper "Vision for 2027" Concludes Integrated Platform is Key to Aligning Enterprise Imaging With Value-based Care

MORTSEL, Belgium and GREENVILLE, South Carolina, May 18, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

• Indepth research leads analyst firm to posit significant advantages of the platform approach for health providers seeking solutions to successfully meet future waves of performance pressures.
• An interoperable platform design is key to the journey of medical imaging towards adopting a more information-driven, consultative approach.

"In a not-so-distant future, medical imaging will be much less empirical, and almost a completely value-based and information-driven discipline." This is part of the hypothesis presented by Frost & Sullivan in a new whitepaper outlining a health imaging vision for 2027. As a key part of developing its scenarios for the coming decade, Frost & Sullivan interviewed Agfa HealthCare Enterprise Imaging customers, on both sides of the Atlantic.

From information islands to an interoperable ecosystem  

The Frost & Sullivan report subtitled, "Platform approach key to constructing an Enterprise Imaging strategy" includes clinical, operational and financial medical imaging scenarios for 2027, after "the dust has settled on the recent healthcare system overhauls in various corners of the world".The ways in which the role of the clinician, the use of metrics and key performance indicators, and the impact of imaging on the financial performance of the healthcare enterprise will change, are all explored.

The report lays out how management, distribution, access and integration of imaging data will evolve from "information islands to an interoperable ecosystem", and from a silo approach to an integrated platform. Workflows centered on procedures and access numbers will make way for patient- and condition-centered diagnosis and decision support processes. The limited ability for cross-enterprise exchange will evolve towards seamless image and information sharing across health systems.

Integrated Enterprise Imaging platform benefits  

To support its vision 2027, Frost & Sullivan spoke with medical imaging executives from leading healthcare organizations in the USA and in Europe. They identified ten "beneficial results" of using Agfa HealthCare's Enterprise Imaging platform. These include:

• Enterprise Imaging platform to build the "imaging health record" in the context of the enterprise electronic health record (EHR) 

"We are integrating our entire radiology system onto Agfa HealthCare. All of radiology at our four hospitals will be on a single Agfa HealthCare platform. When we go live with our enterprise imaging platform from Agfa HealthCare, we also go live with our enterprise-wide electronic health record solution," Max Rosen, Chair of the Department of Radiology, UMASS Medical, Massachusetts, USA.

"Our EHR platform and our EI platform -these are the two 'towers' that are going to be left standing after the next big health IT earthquake that's coming.  Those two towers will run most of the hospital," RJ Merck, Radiology Supervisor, Zuckerberg San Francisco General, California, USA.

• Liquidity of image data promotes patient engagement 

"Our patient portal allows patients to access their radiology images from their own record, which they can export to their own public or private record. One of the building blocks for us to achieve that is building a single data repository, along with advanced information lifecycle management capabilities," Paul Bauwens, ICT Architect, Meander Medisch Centrum, Netherlands.

• Efficient referrer access to imaging promotes multi-disciplinary collaboration 

"Our more proactive radiologists are starting to leave the basement and becoming more consultative with our physicians. Our new technology is helping immensely in that, but this kind of change is about people, process, and technology-in that order," Dr. Scott Rudkin, Chief Medical Information Officer, UC Irvine Health, California, USA.

Single Enterprise Imaging vendor and partner benefits 

The report also outlines ten benefits of a partner-oriented approach, including cost containment, alignment with strategic objectives, improved data ownership and leveragability, and reduced implementation complexity. A single-vendor solution means fewer systems are vulnerable to data leaks or exposed to security breaches. It means more IT resources can be dedicated to one comprehensive IT system to ensure constant monitoring, hardened security, simplified upgrading, operational excellence, and continuity of care.

• Cost containment 

"The total cost with one vendor is much smaller. Perhaps, the individual vendors might be less expensive at first, but in the end, it would be much higher overall. The support cost would be greater with multiple vendors. Integration and administration are the most important issues in our IT organization. I believe that we may have reduced our managing costs by 30% or so," Federico Beltrán Carbonell, IT manager, Hospital Intermutual de Levante, València, Spain.

• Avoidance of the "deconstructed PACS" caveats 

"Deconstructed PACS? It's a myth. It will never happen. It's a lot trickier than it may look to pull off. The different components are not so easily plug and play," RJ Merck, Radiology Supervisor, Zuckerberg San Francisco General, California, USA.

Partnerships support accountability for Risk Mitigation 

"In the enterprise cockpit, decision-makers will be able to base virtually every clinical, operational and financial decision on robust and integrated datasets in gearing their imaging service line," concludes the Frost & Sullivan hypothesis laid out in the report.

"This critical report by Frost & Sullivan, outlining a vision of where medical imaging is headed in the coming decade, confirms our strategy of developing an interoperable platform solution, built on the unambiguous benefits of a single-source procurement and vendor partnership," comments James Jay, President Imaging IT solutions, Agfa HealthCare.

Download the Frost & Sullivan whitepaper "Health Imaging Vision for 2027".    

For an image, courtesy of Agfa HealthCare, click here

About Agfa HealthCare  

Agfa HealthCare, present in one hospital out of two, is a leading provider of eHealth & Digital Imaging solutions. Care organizations in over 100 countries rely on Agfa HealthCare to optimize their efficiency and improve patient care.

Marc De Fré
Global Marcom Director
Agfa HealthCare
T +32(0)3-444-73-19
[email protected]

Miriam Ladin
Director, Marketing Communications,
Agfa HealthCare, Americas
T +1-401-604-2203
[email protected]

SOURCE Agfa HealthCare