Agfa HealthCare announces enhancements to ICIS enterprise imaging platform at HIMSS14

ICIS delivers new image acquisition workflow engine, enhanced ILM capabilities, embedded image exchange, patented hybrid-video display, and more

Press release

Mortsel, Belgium/Greenville, SC

February 24, 2014 4:00 PM CET

ICIS helps healthcare providers capture, manage, and exchange from existing departmental solutions into the EHR or HIE - ICIS VNA features a new workflow engine and updated universal viewer that indexes medical images so they appear, in context, in the EHR or HIE as part of the medical record - Support of non-DICOM and DICOM data formats facilitates storage and access of medical imaging information, multimedia information, and paper documents in one comprehensive platform

Cementing its leadership position in the “Evolution of Visual Healthcare,” during HIMSS14, Agfa HealthCare will unveil several significant enhancements to ICIS.
As the “gold standard” for image-enabling the EHR, ICIS unifies patient records by integrating and linking multi-facility, multi-departmental and multispecialty imaging data, providing the ability to capture, collaborate, manage, and exchange images generated by a health system, usually directly through the EHR.

“Most health systems are now understanding that Enterprise and Regional health strategies require much more than just a VNA,” said Lenny J. Reznik, Director of Enterprise Imaging, Agfa HealthCare. “We are moving past ‘Can we store it?’ to ‘How can I effectively create and use imaging information to empower my physicians to deliver improved care at a lower cost?’ Addressing this shift in problem state is the core purpose of ICIS.”

Reznik continues: “ICIS goes beyond image capture and storage to delivering the particular types of images that are important to the particular physician viewing the health record, knowing what treatment plan they are related to, what problem list they belong to, and what case they are associated with.”

Michael Green, President, Agfa HealthCare Americas Region, further states that “Agfa HealthCare is developing ICIS to meet the challenge head-on to advance the ‘Evolution of Visual Healthcare.’ A basic encounter and accession number can no longer meet enterprise imaging needs. By not only focusing on solving storage problems alone but by embracing cross-department and enterprise access to medical images, Agfa HealthCare is innovating to help health systems meet their quality goals.”

During HIMSS14, Agfa HealthCare will showcase its vision for advancing universal image and data sharing throughout the health enterprise. Several major enhancements to the ICIS platform will be launched, including ICIS TRANSFER, which provides CD import and web transfer of DICOM images, allowing reduction of foreign study management costs. Also making a debut is ICIS VIVID, ICIS’ web and mobile device image capture technology. ICIS VIVID allows physicians on the move to capture metadata-rich medical images and automatically attach these images to the correct medical record. Also showcased is ICIS VIEW’s patent-pending web-based Streaming Hybrid Video technology, allowing hospitals to store video in highly compressed MPEG4 format but enabling physicians with the fine display controls of multi-frame cine.

Agfa HealthCare will also be showing ICIS VENUE for the first time at HIMSS 14. ICIS VENUE allows a federated patient view across multiple, any-vendor PACS and image providers, allowing central access to distributed archives, requiring a VNA. ICIS’s updated ILM engine gives providers more flexibility and power over the data they manage.

“Seamless access to medical images through the EHR or regional health projects can have a significant impact on the care and ongoing treatment a patient receives, while enabling hospitals to deliver optimal, efficient, and cost-effective services,” continues Green. “As ICIS becomes the gold standard for enterprise medical imaging, Agfa HealthCare is continually identifying opportunities to enhance the productivity of the platform by always keeping an eye towards the patient and clinician first. The enhancements we are unveiling at HIMSS14 were developed as part of this broader vision.”