HIMSS: Agfa rolls out data center in U.S., boosts PACS with virtualization
ATLANTA--The benefits of virtual data in real-world healthcare were clear at the Agfa HealthCare booth at HIMSS10 this week. The company debuted to the U.S. market the Impax Data Center with Xero Technology, an upgrade for the Impax Data Center as well as a way to cut costs and increase PACS image availability via virtualization.
The Impax Data Center Viewer powered by Xero is now available in the U.S. This “zero footprint" medical image and report viewer was developed to provide access to medical imaging information for clinicians at point of care and requires only an internet connection. The solution does not require a download of client application software or web application frameworks.
Working in conjunction with Impax Data Center, Agfa said its enterprise medical imaging repository, the Xero technology, allows for local retrieval and viewing of images and reports from multiple departments and EHRs. Its standards-based interface and image processing provide access to imaging information, including DICOM data types, DICOM-encapsulated PDFs, DICOM structured reports and images encoded in various DICOM-supported formats.
Agfa said its Xero technology, a Web 2.0 platform, uses AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to allow users to dynamically retrieve and view text and image information in the user's web browser. Impax Data Center Viewer converts images and content for display in a browser without requiring any client software installation. The viewers require no user site maintenance and very little to no staff training to get up and rolling.
"The Xero technology allows clinicians to 'visualize' the EHR by incorporating reliable access to images, helping hospitals and healthcare facilities transform patient care," said Lenny J. Reznik, Agfa HealthCare's Director of Enterprise Imaging and Information.
The company also showcased the availability to the U.S. market the Impax Data Center 2.0 which allows images to be visualized into EMRs/EHRs to help meet requirements of meaningful use and challenges of healthcare transformation in the age of imaging-enabled medicine.
The data center features a vendor-neutral repository for all images across the enterprise. It uses IHE PIX and XDS(-I) to deliver cross-enterprise sharing of patient data, as well as an industry-endorsed framework that integrates patient records across facilities and patient identifiers.
Impax Data Center 2.0 helps to reduce integration complexity, promote business continuity, centralize operations, lower IT costs and deliver an integrated patient record for improved delivery of care. XDS implementations are slated for multiple sites in Canada with the potential to cover more than 40 percent of Canadian patients, Agfa said.
This week, Agfa also showcased the lower costs and increased RIS/PACS availability they say comes with matching Impax PACS with VMware Virtualization technology. The coupling provides “image management flexibility that is not available with traditional computing architectures," according to Reznik. Using WMware's ESX Server, Impax can be deployed on local and remote servers, enabling ready access to medical information and images.
Virtualization changes the way computing resources are deployed and managed by partitioning physical servers into virtual servers, each running a separate application and operating system. Globally, more than fifty Agfa customers are virtualizing their Impax systems using VMware's technology; nearly all of the company's PACS replacement and new customer PACS are being configured to run on VMware.
The Impax Data Center Viewer powered by Xero is now available in the U.S. This “zero footprint" medical image and report viewer was developed to provide access to medical imaging information for clinicians at point of care and requires only an internet connection. The solution does not require a download of client application software or web application frameworks.
Working in conjunction with Impax Data Center, Agfa said its enterprise medical imaging repository, the Xero technology, allows for local retrieval and viewing of images and reports from multiple departments and EHRs. Its standards-based interface and image processing provide access to imaging information, including DICOM data types, DICOM-encapsulated PDFs, DICOM structured reports and images encoded in various DICOM-supported formats.
Agfa said its Xero technology, a Web 2.0 platform, uses AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to allow users to dynamically retrieve and view text and image information in the user's web browser. Impax Data Center Viewer converts images and content for display in a browser without requiring any client software installation. The viewers require no user site maintenance and very little to no staff training to get up and rolling.
"The Xero technology allows clinicians to 'visualize' the EHR by incorporating reliable access to images, helping hospitals and healthcare facilities transform patient care," said Lenny J. Reznik, Agfa HealthCare's Director of Enterprise Imaging and Information.
The company also showcased the availability to the U.S. market the Impax Data Center 2.0 which allows images to be visualized into EMRs/EHRs to help meet requirements of meaningful use and challenges of healthcare transformation in the age of imaging-enabled medicine.
The data center features a vendor-neutral repository for all images across the enterprise. It uses IHE PIX and XDS(-I) to deliver cross-enterprise sharing of patient data, as well as an industry-endorsed framework that integrates patient records across facilities and patient identifiers.
Impax Data Center 2.0 helps to reduce integration complexity, promote business continuity, centralize operations, lower IT costs and deliver an integrated patient record for improved delivery of care. XDS implementations are slated for multiple sites in Canada with the potential to cover more than 40 percent of Canadian patients, Agfa said.
This week, Agfa also showcased the lower costs and increased RIS/PACS availability they say comes with matching Impax PACS with VMware Virtualization technology. The coupling provides “image management flexibility that is not available with traditional computing architectures," according to Reznik. Using WMware's ESX Server, Impax can be deployed on local and remote servers, enabling ready access to medical information and images.
Virtualization changes the way computing resources are deployed and managed by partitioning physical servers into virtual servers, each running a separate application and operating system. Globally, more than fifty Agfa customers are virtualizing their Impax systems using VMware's technology; nearly all of the company's PACS replacement and new customer PACS are being configured to run on VMware.