Agfa HealthCare and ICW Announce eHealth Collaboration

Agfa HealthCare (Mortsel, Belgium), a leading provider of information technology- (IT)-enabled clinical workflow and diagnostic imaging systems, and InterComponentWare AG (ICW; Walldorf, Germany), an eHealth specialist, announced that they are intensifying their co-operation efforts.

The non-exclusive agreement covers the development of integration and interoperability between Agfa HealthCare's hospital information system (HIS) Orbis and ICW's eHealth Framework. EHealth systems are geared at improving the overall quality of care by allowing healthcare providers to share all relevant patient medical data for an individual in treatment (such as highlighting allergies and medication history). This allows a treating physician to see the total medical record of the patient, regardless of location, and provides support in diagnosis and treatment planning.

The ICW eHealth Framework is an open platform for the development of service-oriented systems for the healthcare market. It offers standardized interfaces for the integration of existing applications of other manufacturers with systems from ICW. The eHealth Framework enables seamless integration, allowing different existing systems to be combined into one consistent system.

The non-exclusive agreement will strengthen Agfa HealthCare's expanding position in the eHealth market. The company has already successfully linked its Orbis systems among different facilities of hospital groups in Europe, and offers the possibility for integration of its applications with general practitioner software vendors.

The agreement is an extension of an ongoing co-operation between the two companies on homogeneity issues in the hospital sector. The many years of experience of ICW developing and using its own eHealth systems have been incorporated into the eHealth Framework. It is the foundation for all product developments at ICW, and is offered to interested partners for their own development purposes.

Philippe Houssiau, president of Agfa HealthCare, explained, "The solutions of Agfa HealthCare and ICW supplement each other optimally. Agfa HealthCare has outstandingly positioned HIS, RIS [radiology information system], and PACS [picture archiving and communications system] solutions.”

InterComponentWare develops and distributes software and hardware components for the healthcare IT infrastructure for electronic health cards, LifeSensor personal health records, as well as networking systems for hospitals and physician offices.

Agfa HealthCare, a member of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, is a leading provider of IT-enabled clinical workflow and image management systems, and advanced systems for capturing, processing, and printing images in hospitals and healthcare facilities.


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